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COPYRIGHT DEPOSE 



FRANCES WILLARD 
HER LIFE AND WORK 



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FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
(From a drawing by Miss Lisa Stillman, 1894.) 



Frontispiece. 



FRANCES WILLARD 

HER LIFE AND WORK 



RV 

h\A*. (kv, UK ) 

RAY STRACHEY 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY LADY HENRY SOMERSET 
AND EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS 



T. FISHER UNWIN 

LONDON : ADELPHI TERRACE 

LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 

1912 






"V ) 



{All rights reserved.) 



r 



Go 
M. CAREY THOMAS 



PREFACE 

Several "Lives" of Frances Willard have been 
written, by her friends and those who helped 
her with her work, and in these books she has 
been praised beyond measure. 

It seemed to me, coming to this task with no 
memories of her, and very little knowledge of 
the work she did, as if she could not have been 
so great or so important a woman as they said 
she was. It seemed to me also as if she 
could not have been so good nor so lovable a 
human being, and for a long time I was inclined 
to look upon these accounts as exaggerated. 

But in studying her life I have come almost 
to believe that she was perfect ; not in her deeds, 
perhaps, nor in her work, but in her soul. 
Poring, day after day, over her letters and her 
diaries, reading and rereading her books and 
speeches, I have come to share their enthusiasm. 
I have learned to know her " loves, hates, 
prayers, promises, and insignificancies," and thus 
I have grown daily more sure of her greatness. 

She was vigorous, with the vigour of her 
country • she was rash and sometimes unwise, 
with a love of great undertakings that no disap- 

vii 



Preface 

pointments could check ; she seemed senti- 
mental, too, with her strange education, her 
journalistic pen, and her habit of talking straight 
from her inmost soul ; but she was true, and 
she was pure in heart, and therefore blessed. 

She was lovable and charming ; I have 
grown sure of this, and also that she was a most 
vivid and exhilarating companion. But I have 
found it very hard to tell these things. 

I have been greatly indebted to many of 
Miss Willard's friends, who have helped me in 
this work ; to Lady Henry Somerset, through 
whose kindness I have been allowed to under- 
take the task; to Miss Anna Gordon and Mrs. 
L. N. Stevens, who welcomed me to Rest 
Cottage and told me of her daily life and 
work ; to Miss Agnes Slack and Miss Gorham, 
through whom I have seen her letters ; and, 
above all, to my grandmother, Mrs. Hannah 
Whitall Smith, whose stories of Miss Willard, 
and faith in her, have enabled me to read her 
life rightly. She helped me with criticism and 
revision, and in more ways than I can tell. 

I started to write this book as an outsider, 
and a critic, as one who could judge of her 
life unblinded by loyalty or affection. But I 
have not succeeded. I am not an outsider any 
longer, but a follower and a friend. 

RAY STRACHEY. 

Arundel, July, 1912. 

viii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION ..... Xlii 

C1I IPTBR 

I. CHILDHOOD AT FOREST HOME . . . I 

II. EDUCATION AND THE SEARCH FOR "CULTURE" . 41 

HI. INDEPENDENCE . . . . -78 

IV. TEACHING . . . . . . 114 

V. EUROPE . . . . . . 139 

VI. THE NORTH-WESTERN UNIVERSITY . . 1 54 

VII. THE CRUSADE AND THE BEGINNING OF TEMPERANCE 

WORK . . . . . .172 

VIII. WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE AND RECORD WORK IN BOSTON 191 

IX. ORGANISATION AND PROHIBITION . . . 209 

X. POLITICS AND THE WORLD'S WORK . . 238 

XI. WORK IN ENGLAND ..... 266 

XII. THE VALUE OF FRANCES WILLARD . . 294 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FRANCES E. WILLARD 

JOSIAH WILLARD 

FRANCES WILLARD. AGE 1 8 

MARY WILLARD 

FRANCES WILLARD. AGE 28 
FRANCES WILLARD. AGE 38 

MRS. WILLARD 

LADY HENRY SOMERSET 



Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

6 



. 44 

108 

. 130 
188 

220 

266 



XI 



FRANCES WILLARD 

AN IMPRESSION 
By LADY HENRY SOMERSET 

The tendency of our day is to judge 
men and women by their efficiency, by the 
work they have accomplished, rather than 
by the character behind the work. Time 
teaches us another lesson. The lives of 
people who are really great stand out 
alone, apart from the cause they espoused 
or the work they accomplished. These 
fall away as merely accidental, and we 
see the character stripped of all the 
accessories of surroundings, free from the 
activities by which it was expressed. 
This is the standard by which Frances 
Willard will be judged. I rejoice that one 
who lives and works in another generation 
should have written her life, because she 
sees the greatness of the woman, apart 
from the charm of the personality which 

:dii 



Frances Willard 

had so strong an influence on those who 
worked with her. 

"The Lord is real, His whole nature 
is love. " This, she tells us, was the 
motive-power of her life. Here was a 
woman without social position, and with- 
out fortune, who began life as a farmers 
daughter in New England, who passed 
her girlhood on a Western prairie, who 
gave herself to an unpopular reform, but, 
with this simple motive as the force of 
her life, attained to greatness such as few 
women have reached in this century. Her 
early career began with some brilliancy. 
Dean of the North-Western Female 
College, it seemed as though large 
purposes opened before her. But the 
direction was unlooked for. Her heart 
was claimed by the great social and 
religious movement of that day, and she 
renounced a successful profession to go 
out into an unpopular cause, without 
money or the assurance of success. When 
she had thrown in her lot with the 
Temperance army, so determined was she 
to be led by God alone, that she would 

not suffer the women of the Union to 

• 

XIV 



An Impression 

speak of compensation, and they, thinking 
that m some unknown way abundant 
means were supplied her, accepted her 
service, all unmindful of the fact that she 
often came to them hungry because she 
had no money to buy bread. 

It was this simplicity and single aim 
that gave her such a hold over human 
beings. It was this, that made it possible 
for all who came into her presence to feel 
that they had found a friend, that their 
interests, their lives, their work, their 
development were the things that were 
always near her heart. She knew the 
divine in humanity, and in the very 
darkest, dingiest, human life she recog- 
nised the aureole that no one else saw. 
It was not that she made herself believe 
in people, it was that she did believe in 
them. She had an intuition of their 
best, and although at times that intuition 
made her possibly exaggerate the good 
and minimise the ill, it never failed to call 
out, at any rate for the time, in that 
human soul a real desire to live up to 
what she believed it to be. I have seen 
her come into the presence of people who, 

XV 



Frances Willard 

superficially, one would say were in their 
outlook dwarfed and stunted and worldly, 
and in a few moments one would realise 
that the individual had caught sight of 
something he had not, perhaps, seen before. 
It was not anything she had said, it was 
no startling proposition that she had laid 
down, but it was just as though a light 
had come into a dark room, and suddenly 
had illuminated everything which was there 
all the time, but which had not been 
perceived. She had an absolute trust that 
they would understand the best, that they 
could not fail to see it, that their motive 
was the same as hers. So they found 
themselves gazing into that which they 
had never seen, and realising that in which 
they had never believed : they had come for 
a moment within the laws of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. She awakened people in 
thousands of cases to see what they might 
be, to believe in themselves and their own 
powers, not just blindly to follow some 
leader, but to believe in what they them- 
selves could accomplish. She had the 
power of showing people to themselves, 
not the bad or the discouraging side, but 

xvi 



An Impression 

the best and strongest, life's greatest 
possibilities for each one. 

Then she had the wonderful art of 
praise, an instinct in her that made her 
understand that the human heart is far 
more apt to be self-depreciating than really 
proud, that the most boastful people are 
sometimes at bottom the most uncertain 
of themselves, that they put, as it were, 
all their wares in the window, because 
they realise that there is nothing behind. 
And Frances Willard knew that praise 
was humbling, and that when people 
heard her speak of them as though they 
were able to fulfil something or to accom- 
plish something, there went up a great 
desire that they might be worthy of what 
she thought them, and in nine cases out of 
ten, I venture to say, her praise was the 
very best medicine to the individual soul. 

To be " about her Fathers business " 
always seemed to be the mainspring of 
her life. But it was a tender, human life, 
appealing in its physical weakness, often, 
leaning on others in a way that seemed 
scarcely conceivable in one so strong in 
character, dependent for little things, and 

xvii 



Frances Willard 

recognising her dependence ; incapable ol 
meeting the burden of life alone, clinging 
like a child, trustful, wistful, and weak in 
all her great strength. 

But I think the greatest evidence of how 
deeply she was rooted in Christianity was 
her power of forgiveness. I know no one 
who felt more acutely the bitterness of in- 
gratitude, the heartache of a slight, or the 
stab of an enemy. I have seen her lip quiver 
as she read a letter, and her hand tremble, 
and I have realised how profoundly the 
human pain and disappointment entered her 
soul, and yet after a moment's struggle, 
she would set herself to devise some way 
by which she could go out of the routine 
of her life, and, by giving herself some 
extra trouble, write the word or do the 
act that would make the one who had 
injured her feel that all was right, that 
love could never fail. 

She saw with a clear vision that the 
things which people call secular are bound 
up with religion. She was the pioneer of 
" religion in politics " in America. She 
inspired men and women of all lands to 
understand that there was, in the very act 

xviii 



An Impression 

of voting for the laws of their country, 
a sacred charge, holy, high and true, and 
that by evolution and not by revolution 
must come that wider liberty which God 
destines for humanity. 

She was the greatest democrat I ever 
knew, not because she advocated any 
especial democratic measures, although 
she did this abundantly, but because she 
literally seemed to know no difference 
between human beings on account of any 
outward distinction of class, or money, 
or social position. It was not that she 
knew these differences, and felt it right to 
ignore them, but she actually did not 
know them, and could not be made to 
understand why they should exist. All 
human beings were to her the children 
of our one Father, and in each she recog- 
nised a sister or a brother. She was, 
therefore, the defender of all who were 
oppressed, and the upholder of every 
forlorn hope in reform. In her, the 
coloured race of America had a devoted 
and unfailing friend, and the wage-earners 
of the world an enthusiastic champion. 

Such was Frances Willard as we knew 



XIX 



Frances Willard 

her, and herein lay the strength of her 
work. Long after the temperance cause 
has ceased to be a great social question, 
long after men and women have recognised 
that clear brains and healthy bodies are an 
essential to happiness and holiness, when 
the battle is almost forgotten, and the 
struggle to attain this is thought of no 
more, her name will still stand out as a 
woman whose influence was felt in all 
parts of the world. 

By a camp fire in the far North-West 
a group of men gathered one night after 
a hard day's hunting. The conversation 
turned on Woman, with comments not 
always favourable and jests unlovely. 
One of the guides, who had hitherto been 
silent, a man of wild life and doubtful 
record, looked across in the firelight at 
the other men, and said, " I met a woman 
once, East, who made me think differently. 
She made me believe in women, and her 
name was Frances Willard." 



XX 



Frances Willard : her Life 
and Work 

CHARTER I 
CHILDHOOD AT FOREST HOME 

Frances Elizabeth Willard was born in 
1839, when America was still a very young 
country, when the West was wild and unde- 
veloped territory, and when slavery flourished 
in the South. She grew up in the years before 
the war, when the West was growing up too ; 
she spent her youth in the midst of its crude 
new civilisation, without standards and without 
learning; but in their stead she caught, in this 
western training, something of the love of adven- 
ture that pioneers have, and she shared their 
spirit of hopefulness. Sprung from the plain 
people, and loving the plain people, she came 
to be their leader, and she led them towards a 
wider and a healthier life. 

Her father and mother both came from the 

I B 



Frances Willard 

strong Puritan stock of New England. For 
many generations Willards and Hills had 
been uncompromising and prosperous pastors, 
teachers, soldiers, and merchants, who lived 
honestly and feared nothing. They were typical 
of the vigorous community in which they 
lived — a community which left a very clear mark 
upon the early history of America, and which 
sent its sons and daughters to settle farther and 
farther West, and to carry with them the tradi- 
tions of independence and courage in which they 
had been trained. 

Before 1820 Western New York was largely 
uncultivated forest land, and into this wilderness 
Oliver Willard and John Hill, Frances' grand- 
parents, had moved almost at the same time. 
They settled in the little village of Ogden, where 
they built their log-houses not far apart. There 
was at that time no school or church in Ogden, 
but the school was soon built. The greatest ideal 
of these pioneers was always education, and they 
strove to give to their children some of the 
opportunities there had been in the life they had 
left, though the means in their hands were 
primitive. Mary Hill was the first teacher of 
this little school in Ogden, and she took up her 
task at fifteen. 



Childhood at Forest Home 

The great preoccupation of the community was, 
of course, religion, for it was the one intellectual 
and emotional interest they had. Politics came 
to them only once a week, with the papers, and 
they discussed the affairs of the next world more 
than the affairs of this. Their church was not 
built till 1832, but before it existed Sabbath 
Day services were held in the barns round about. 
The Hills were " marvellous men in prayer, and 
wonderful exhorters," and Mary's mother was 
" a mighty power in word, and saw God and 
heard Him in all His works." The Willards, 
too, were " truly pious," and all the chil- 
dren were brought up to work and to pray. 
Their religion was quite unsectarian, their 
Church the Church of God in Ogden, and 
they were tolerant of everything but wrong- 
doing. 

In 1 83 1 Josiah Willard and Mary Hill were 
married, and for ten years they lived on in 
Ogden, where their children Oliver and Frances 
were born. In 1841 they moved to Oberlin, 
Ohio, and Mary Willard was born there. They 
went to Oberlin in order that Mr. Willard might 
enter the University. He was a studious and 
serious man, and he had kept the ideal of edu- 
cation steadily before him. At Oberlin, there- 

3 



Frances Willard 

fore, he set himself to prepare for and then to 
enter the University, and for five years he 
studied hard in the hope of finally becoming a 
minister. But in 1847 his health broke down, 
and the whole family went farther West once 
more. Between 18 16 and 1847 civilisation had 
spread as far as Ohio, but beyond there were 
only backwoods and prairies, with scattered 
settlers and a few small and primitive towns ; 
and into this unknown land the Willards 
went. 

We are familiar with the picture of the 
slowly travelling prairie schooners which made 
their way westward, carrying out into the 
unknown country the knowledge and religion of 
the eastern States. In three of these long 
wagons the Willards set forth, taking all their 
goods with them, and leaving behind them the 
life which they knew. They travelled all day, 
for nearly thirty days, through the woods and 
across the lonely prairies. Near the end of 
Lake Michigan they passed a small village in 
a gloomy swamp, from which they were warned 
by the notice, " No bottom here," whose silent 
and dreary wastes had turned, when Frances 
came back that way, into Chicago, the noisiest city 
in the world ! They went past the end of the 

4 



Childhood at Forest Home 

lake, and turned north to Wisconsin, and finally 
settled on the banks of Rock River. There 
Josiah Willard bought land, and began to build 
his farm, " Forest Home." It was four miles 
from the nearest village, and lay on the other 
side of the river. This village was Janesville, a 
name that could not, surely, be found anywhere 
but in the West ! Before Frances was eighteen 
it had grown to be quite a large town, but in 
1847 it was a very small place with hardly two 
thousand inhabitants. 

Josiah Willard had to build his own farm- 
house with timber cut by his own hands. At first 
he built only a small house and outbuildings, but 
by degrees other rooms were added, and sheds 
and stables. It was a low house with a long 
veranda or " stoop " running along the side, 
and an outside kitchen at the back. In front of 
the house was a grove of trees, and behind was 
the river, on the other side of which were end- 
less forests. On the left lay the garden and 
orchard, and then the prairies stretching away 
for miles, and on the right was the yard, with 
the barns and the stables, and beyond them the 
ploughed fields encroaching on the prairies, with 
the forest coming up to the very edge of them. 
It was a very lonely place. What neighbours 

5 



Frances Willard 

there were, were far away, and for the first 
few years the life must have been a very hard 
one. 

The pioneers of the great West have been too 
busy breaking in the forest, ploughing the 
prairie, and conquering the wild country to leave 
us any clear picture of their daily life. But 
through the early journals of Frances Willard 
we can see, as through a window, how life went 
by in the backwoods of Wisconsin. We see the 
hard work of the farm, the fencing and plough- 
ing, the cutting of trees and rearing of cattle, 
the growing of the precious crops, and all the 
daily difficulties ; how the house was banked up 
for fear of the winter hurricanes, and how the 
prairie fires were fought with fire ; how the hogs 
escaped down the road, the gophers ate up the 
corn, and the rats got among the potatoes ; how 
the apple-trees died, and the oxen were lost, and 
the milk froze in the churn by the fire, and 
blue-jays were caught in the quail traps. We 
see all these things, and also how there went 
with them the struggle for education. Though 
they worked so hard, these pioneers had further 
ambitions than to have prosperous farms. They 
struggled to make their new towns on the 
pattern of the old civilisation from which they 





-.....-v. 



JOSIAH WILLARD. 



To face page 6. 



Childhood at Forest Home 

had come, and they looked eagerly for news 
from the East. 

Mr. Willard was one of the best examples of 
these serious pioneers. As a farmer he was 
very successful, partly because he found the 
work exceedingly interesting. He loved trees, 
stones, winds, and clouds, and studied them care- 
fully, and made of his farm one of the model 
places of the neighbourhood. He took a great 
interest, too, in the political life of the new com- 
munity, wrote a history of Rock County, became 
magistrate and assessor of taxes, and went to 
Janesville many times a week on " town " busi- 
ness. He also served one term in the State 
Legislature in '48, but left, disgusted with the 
corruption he found there. He was a " dyed- 
in-the-wood Abolitionist " and a " Conserva- 
tive." His wife fully shared these opinions, and 
even carried them farther than he did. She 
was in many ways a most remarkable woman. 
Overwhelmed, as the wife of a settler must be, 
with the unending cares of her household, with 
all the washing, cooking, sewing, baking, and 
cleaning to do, she still found time to read, to 
teach her children, and to enter into all their 
pursuits. It was, however, a lonely and a hard 
life. Years afterwards, when some one asked her 

7 



Frances Willard 

what she thought " the best means of culture 
for rural districts," Mrs. Willard answered with- 
out hesitation : "I should say pack up your duds 
and go where folks live." 

But this they could not then do. They were 
settled in the wilderness, and they determined 
that it should prove a good home for their three 
children, Oliver, Frances, and Mary. Josiah 
Willard was rather a stern father, and his views 
were often more severe than those of his wife, 
whose maxim it was to " let a child grow as a 
tree grows." But nevertheless, in the Willard 
family there was great harmony, and the fact 
that books were few and neighbours distant led 
them to seek companionship from each other 
at home. Mr. Willard taught his children to 
love and to notice Nature, as he did; Mrs. 
Willard taught them to love poetry, and both 
parents set before them the love of God. " The 
children must have habits," Mr. Willard 
would say, but, as he never said good habits, 
his daughter declared that she grew up thinking 
there were no habits but good habits. 

This point of view was characteristic of Miss 

Willard all through her life — for though it was 

to be spent in fighting against evil, and though 

she was to know so much about sin and wicked- 

8 



Childhood at Forest Home 

ness, yet she always believed that goodness was 
natural and evil only an accident. Her faith 
in the essential virtue of every human being was 
absolute, and it could not be shaken. She had 
such an innocent hopefulness and trust in every 
person, that no one could be in her presence 
without feeling as if tlaey had somehow become 
nobler and more worthy of confidence. It may 
be that her " eyes were too pure to behold 
iniquity/' or perhaps she really drew out good- 
ness, but certainly she remained until her death, 
not only free from evil herself, but free from 
the very belief in it. 

The training that the Willard children received 
was good in every way. Mrs. Willard had 
almost a genius for motherhood, and devoted 
herself with infinite tact to the proper develop- 
ment of her children. They led a healthy, 
active life, they had high ideals of education 
and of religion set before them ; then, too, their 
x parents knew that the fewer restrictions they 
placed upon them, the more surely would they 
" tuck a happy childhood under their jackets," 
and so they left them as free as the conditions 
of their life made possible. When the girls 
were old enough, however, their mother gave 
them some of the household tasks to do. In 

9 



Frances Willard 

1855 their share of the work was described by 
Frances (who was then fifteen) in her Journal 
as follows :— 

" Daily labours. — In the morning at six o'clock we get 
up, and while one sets the table the other cooks meat or 
potatoes or something for breakfast. Father makes the 
coffee : with that exception we get the breakfast alone. 
After we have all eaten, Mary and I pick up the dishes, 
wash and wipe them and put them away ; sweep the 
floor and stoop, and the sitting-room. Then we read our 
chapters in the Bible, embroider some, and then our work 
is done until ' noon.' At eleven o'clock we put on 
the coffee pot, and potatoes : at half-past eleven we set 
the table and get dinner. After dinner we do up all the 
work and then we are done till about six in the evening. 
Then we get supper and clear up after it. In the evening 
we read or write or talk or play proverbs. Some days 
we have Father's room to sweep and arrange, or else the 
outside kitchen. On Monday we arrange the sitting-room 
and hang out the clothes in addition. When not working 
we produce music, study, read or play. Sometimes 
Mother helps get some meal, but generally we do, for 
she has enough to do without. We do all the coarse 
ironing every week almost." 

Mary was gentle and quiet, and seems to have 

liked these household tasks, but Frances hated 

them one and all : " Now I have got to do 

my awful needlework," she complains to her 

Journal, and again, " I baked a cake and had 

10 



Childhood at Forest Home 

no luck at all." Seeing how greatly she dis- 
liked it, her mother generally let her do other 
things. She always encouraged her children to 
do what was most congenial to them, and there- 
fore she let Frances run wild on the farm. But 
the housework could not always be escaped, and 
when there was need Frances was very willing 
to help her mother, and only blamed " the 
usages of the present day " for the waste of 
time. Spring-cleaning she called the " scourge 
of mankind " and cordially detested it, but it 
was against " invited company " that her 
greatest rage was directed. 

"1855. — Alas for the usages of the present day! 
When you entertain a friend you must scorch yourself 
for days previously to prepare viands to suit his thankless 
palate, and then you are so fatigued and feel so much 
care that you do not enjoy yourself one atom. If I live 
a hundred years I never want to hear of invited company 
again. Such a revolution of affairs, such a total dis- 
arrangement of comfort ! I feel most uncommon cross." 

But then, when the guests had gone ! 

" Bright, glad, free, free ! Got up early, did my duties 
and took a nice walk. Have been fixing a barrel to 
my gun. Am going to set some traps for birds. 
Company does give zest to solitude ! " 

11 



Frances Willard 

The diary which " Frank " kept faithfully when 
she was fifteen and sixteen gives vivid pictures 
of the free and happy life she led. Everything 
outdoors was delightful to her, from the forest 
fires that burned so gloriously to the pet rabbits 
that she kept. She loved to play and to run, 
to go hunting with her cross-gun or fishing 
" for minnies." She did not kill any buffaloes 
nor catch any fish, but she enjoyed herself 
greatly ! 

Oliver was five years older than Frances, but 
was always a delightful playfellow to her. She 
was as proud of him as he of her. She followed 
in his footsteps, and Mary followed in hers. 
When Oliver was a mighty hunter so were his 
sisters, when he climbed trees they scrambled 
up after him, when he was a carpenter so were 
they, and when he went out to plant or to hoe 
they went out to help, or hinder him. What- 
ever he did Frances longed to share, and her 
adventurous spirit sometimes landed the poor 
little sister who followed behind in most 
uncomfortable places. But Oliver was always 
willing to stop his games and come to Mary's 
rescue, and so their running wild made them 
all happy. 

But there was one thing that Frances was 

12 



Childhood at Forest Home 

not allowed to do, and it was a great grief to 
her. 'Her father thought it dangerous for her 
to ride, and did not allow it, and consequently 
it was with very jealous eyes that she used to 
watch Oliver as he rode proudly off over the 
fields. At last, when she felt that she could 
not bear it any longer, she decided that she 
would " just have to ride something," and there- 
fore, with a great deal of trouble, she trained 
a cow to the saddle. It was a very ungainly 
steed, and she had many tumbles, and caused 
many shouts of laughter before she succeeded 
in riding it. When at last she did, she got 
little pleasure, however ; any one who has tried 
riding a cow will know how unexpectedly dis- 
tressing is the motion. But still a good result 
followed, for Mr. Willard relented and gave the 
desired permission. Whether he thought horses 
safer than cows, whether he yielded to the per- 
suasions of his wife, or whether it was a reward 
for her perseverance, she did not know. But 
her joy was great. She rushed to her Journal 
to write : — 

" Hurrah ! rejoice ! A new era has this moment been 
ushered in. Rode a horse through the corn. Oh ! it 
is nice — the acme of my hopes realised. 

" Having done my morning work, I saddled old grey 

13 



Frances Willard 

with our new side-saddle, came in and dressed in my old 
black silk basque, alpaca riding skirt, meeting bonnet and 
kid gloves, and swelled forth. Our new side-saddle is 
superb." 

It is to be supposed that she did not always 
" swell forth/' however, for what she really loved 
was the freedom to run or to ride without 
having to stop and think of clothes or 
proprieties. 

She and Mary knew all about the farm work, 
how to milk the cows and harness the oxen, 
when to plant and when to reap. They fed the 
animals and chased the hogs and the turkeys 
and the cattle, when there was what Frances 
called " a reign of riot " in the yard. They 
set traps in the woods, where sometimes, to 
their great delight, they caught quails ; and they 
led a very busy life all the year round. Frances 
observed as well as enjoyed everything that went 
on. Her journal is full of the wildest high 
spirits, sometimes mixed with serious reflections, 
and sometimes with little touches of description 
that bring the scenes very vividly before us : — 

"Aug. 2, 1855. — We all went fishing. A mud turtle 
came swimming along. Johnny Hodge caught a fish — 
Provoking ! I can't catch one." 

" April 1. — It is thawing rapidly. Pigeons by thousands 

14 



Childhood at Forest Home 

are flying west on their way to Missouri I suppose. 
Prairie hens who who who'mg." 

"Aug. 3. — Father sowing wheat. Great prairie fire 
up by Denning's. Almost burned the barn. Thermo- 
meter %%°. The river is fordable for the first time in four 
years. 

" May. — Saw a green snake and a wolf den with recent 
tracks of the occupant." 

"June 7, 1855. — Cloudy. Father and Oliver gone over 
the river to hunt oxen. Have been having great times. 
It is fun (the best kind too) to see them begin to break 
the prairie soil. Having got fairly started they proceeded 
somewhat as follows : ' Gee up, get 'long there Buck and 
Bawley, Whoa there ; Haw Haw, you lazy beggars," 
whip, whip, whip, ' Haw now, get up, get along, Whoa, 
whoa then,' Whip, whip, whip, c What's the matter ? 
Oh ! that colter's x too high.' ' Frances, hand him the 
hatchet, and we'll see if we can't fix it.' Pound, pound, 
pound. ' That'll do. Hand me the whip. Now, get up, 
Bawley, go 'long. Darn you, boy, get up, get up ! ' 
Exit whipping. 

" Hogs got into the garden, and ate up almost all my 
corn. O, for patience, fortitude and forbearance ! O, my 
poor teeth, how you do grind ! Chased hogs, sheep, 
calves, &c, till I'm very tired. 

" Adolphus saw Indians in town shooting with bows 
and arrows. Wish I'd seen them — so Indianical ! " 

" Went coasting down hill. Enjoyed it exceedingly. 
Tipped over twelve times, went down hill twelve 
times." 

1 The fore-iron of the plough. 
15 



Frances Willard 

" Mary and I watched sheep all the forenoon — got most 
thoroughly sick of the business." 

" Father killed a quail. Oliver has come in — he's 
killed another pigeon. What a supper we'll have ! 
New biscuit, fresh butter, Dutch cheese, pigeons, currant 
and rhubarb pie, plum jelly, sweet cake, fried cakes, 
tea, asparagus, lettuce, fried bread ! " 

" I fixed my gun. It is queer that a girl fifteen years 
old should like a cross gun, but I can't help it. The 
Ethiopian cannot change his skin, &c. It is 'my nature 
to. ' " 

" Practised shooting at a mark. Expect to be a dead 

shot in time." 

• • • 

"Thermometer this morning 20°. A man called 
to buy some wood. Oliver killed a quail. Mother baked 
pies. Played ball a good deal. Adjusted the lens 
of a spy-glass, hoping thereby to make a microscope of 
it. Determined to learn phonography as soon as I can 
get the necessary books. Weather bright and cold. My 
hand trembles — I've played ball so much." 

" Have the day before me. Shall spend it reading, 
writing and composing. 

"Evening. — Have not spent the day just as intended. 
Mr. Hodge with John and Rupert called and we 
went with them to hunt their turkey." 

"Read Shakespeare, worked, &c. Have read thus far 

16 



Childhood at Forest Home 

seventeen of Shakespeare's plays. I'll mention it now 
for fear I shall forget that our cat is one year old 
the 17th. of this month." 

" Father in town. Mother cooking. Mary sifted a 
bag of Indian meal. Read 'Love's Labour's Lost' 
and ' Midsummer Night's Dream/ wiped dishes, and 
swept dining-room floor." 

"John taught us how to play marbles. Had pleasant 
time to-day, in fact I 'most always do." 

" Baited my fishing hook with worms. Oh ! it is 
beautiful to live." 

While she was leading this active external 

life, chasing the hogs and shooting at a mark, 

she was also slowly and reluctantly growing up. 

At a very early age she had stood on chairs 

or gateposts to recite poems and make speeches 

to imaginary audiences, and later she began to 

write stories and compositions, and to read 

everything she could find. She also organised 

a club of subscribers to the children's paper, 

the Little Pilgrim, for, as she said later : " All 

who did that were to have their names printed 

in a list, and I, so distant and obscure, found a 

fascination in the thought that my name would 

be put in type away in Philadelphia ! So I went 

17 c 



Frances Willard 

on horseback near and far to get the names, 
when lo ! my own appeared, but, as so often 
since, it had an / where e ought to have been ; 
whereat I lost my temper and complained to 
mother that I guessed they didn't think a girl 
could come to anything in this world anyhow." 

In spite of this disappointment she per- 
severed in her literary ambitions, however, and 
one of her youthful compositions was printed 
in the Prairie Farmer, to her unbounded delight. 

Although she cared most for outdoor things, 
her essays contained wonderfully big words, and 
" long, long thoughts " often filled her mind, 
although she did not like to believe that they 
stood for the real things. Running about was 
real, and hunting was real, but writing and 
thinking, though some impulse made her do 
both, were only vaguely understood to be part 
of life. To try and bring these puzzling occu- 
pations into touch with what was actual, she 
devoted her literary energies to writing the 
history of " Rupert Melville, the Young Hunter " 
— a story which had so many characters that 
Oliver felt sure she would never be able to kill 
them all off properly in less than a hundred 
volumes. For the same reason, when she wanted 
to be undisturbed, she climbed up to the top 

18 



Childhood at Forest Home 

of a black-oak tree, where she had made a seat 
for herself. To make this retreat quite secure 
she nailed a board to the tree on which was 
painted, " The Eagle's Nest : Beware ! "—and 
once there she could sit and meditate about 
life without feeling herself quite cut off from 
the real and adventurous parts of it. 

To her Journal she also confessed that she 
" had a habit of going and sitting on top of 
the house in the shade," carrying with her her 
books and papers and her contradictory, 
impulses. 

In her meditations religion had very little 
part. She did not like to " talk religion " at 
all, and would sit silent when others spoke of 
it, answering only in monosyllables, and resent- 
ing any attempt to make her express her own 
feelings. She did not, in fact, know what these 
were. She wrote in her journal, " Don't enjoy 
Sundays much," and even confessed when she 
was sixteen that she "counted 150 wasps on 
the ceiling in church," and these were the only 
comments she made on the subject. 'Her father 
and mother were both sincerely religious, but 
they did not often speak about their beliefs. As 
Miss Willard said in her "Happy Half -Century," 
they " just lived the gospel right along, taught 

19 



Frances Willard 

its precepts, and prayed much. . . ." Sundays 
they kept with a certain severity. If the roads 
were passable they drove to church in the farm 
wagon, leaving one at home to prepare the 
dinner. Oliver was by far the best cook, and 
took a great pride in his performances — while 
Frances was so bad as rarely to miss her 
services for that purpose. After the dinner Mr. 
Willard used to go for a walk with his children, 
and talk to them about Nature and sometimes 
about God, and then they would come in an;d 
sit quietly by the fire reading Sunday books or 
singing hymns — too peaceful a day for Frances 
when compared with her wild scrambles from 
Monday to Saturday. 

Mary had a much more quiet nature. It was 
she who chiefly loved and cared for their pets, 
and wrote their sad epitaphs : — 

" Alas ! poor pet, and did it die ? 
How dismal this must be ! " 

And she was the inventor of all the more 
gentle games at Forest Home. She would join 
with the others in their war-whoops and their 
battles, but in return they joined with her in 
her sketching expeditions and her search for 
wild flowers. 

20 



Childhood at Forest Home 

She used to talk and think a great deal about 
goodness, and was troubled with a very sensitive 
conscience, which made her fear that many , of 
her innocent occupations were sinful ■ but 
Frances, to whom she confided her spiritual 
difficulties, invariably told her that she was 
already too good, and encouraged her in her 
blameless misdeeds. 

Frances herself sometimes made resolutions 
"to be good," but her diary does not record 
much introspection. On her fifteenth birthday 
she described herself with a curious mixture of 
childish values and observation :— 

" I've good things about me. I don't stay angry but 
a minute. ... I learn easily but I forget easily. I'm a 
spendthrift, too. I think I'm sensitive, and on that 
account careful of the feelings of others. . . . I'm a lazy 
girl. I'm a quick-tempered girl. I rub my eyes. I 
snort. I used to eat coal and the bark of trees. I'm 
fonder of anything out of my sphere than of anything 
in it." 

This last remark is characteristic of the 
thoughts she pondered on the roof and in the 
Eagle's Nest, for the value of freedom was 
the first thing to be clear to her. As she grew 
older, she decided for what purposes freedom 
was to be used, but for some time she, does 

21 



Frances Willard 

not seem to have been greatly troubled by any 
other belief than that freedom was good. 
This she held passionately. Whenever, in the 
daily record of what she was doing, she gave 
a little hint of what she felt, it was always in 
some way connected with freedom. Her desire 
to ride a cow was as much an assertion of inde- 
pendence as it was a longing to ride, and this 
she generalised for herself as she perched irt 
her tree. She once insisted on going with her 
father to the scene of a rather dangerous forest 
fire that had come too near them, and after- 
wards she wrote in her Journal :— 

" How much better a person feels to be on the ground 
themselves than to be waiting at home ! " 

As she grew older this love of freedom grew 
stronger and stronger. It made her ambitious, 
and it set her wondering about the things she 
might, and the things she might not, do. She 
once asked her mother whether she thought they 
would ever know anything or see anybody or 
go anywhere — she felt sure that there were all 
kinds of things she could do, if only she had 
a chance. 

In 1855, when she was fifteen, she came 

across a copy of the Una, which she described 

22 



Childhood at Forest Home 

as " a first-rate Women's Rights paper," and 
this must have given new impetus to her natural 
love of equality, and also given her things to 
think about— things which did not conflict so 
much with her ways of living as if she had 
known more of the world. For at Forest Home 
each person did what they could do best, anfd 
Oliver often cooked the dinner while Frances 
fed the cows. 

It must have been about this time, too, that 
she heard her mother's confession of faith on 
this subject. She told the story, years after- 
wards, at one of her great meetings. 

" Longer ago than I shall tell my father returned one 
night to the far-off Wisconsin home where I was reared ; 
sitting by my mother's chair, with a child's attentive ear, 
I listened to their words. He told us the news that day 
had brought, about Neal Dow and the great fight for 
Prohibition down in Maine, and then he said, ' I wonder if 
poor rum-cursed Wisconsin will ever get a law like that ? ' 
And mother rocked awhile in silence, and then she gently 
said, 'Yes, Josiah, there'll be such a law all over the land 
some day, when women vote.' My father had never heard 
her say so much before. He was a great Conservative, so 
he looked tremendously astonished and answered, ' And 
pray how will you arrange it so that women shall vote ? ' 
Mother's chair went to and fro a little faster for a minute, 
and then, not looking into his face, but into the flickering 
flames of the grate, she slowly answered, ' Well, I say 

23 



Frances Willard 

to you, as the apostle Paul said to his jailer, " You 
have put us into prison, we being Romans, and you 
must come and take us out." ' " 

These views of her mother's probably put into 
her head the ideas she had when she wrote in 
her Journal :— 

" Nov. 6. — Election day. Father and Oliver, Mike 
and Edward [the hired men] gone to assist in ' saving the 
country.' Oliver feeling his consequence mightily as it 
is his first vote ! Mary and I did usual work. Mary 
arranged the cupboard and I cleared up after her." 

In her Autobiography she added how this had 
made her wonder whether she did not love her 
country as much as Oliver did, and whether she, 
too, could not help it with her ballot. 

When she was quite a child she had written, 
one 4th of July : — 

" I do love my country, and I'd take my flag and cross- 
gun and Frisk, and help defend her cause at any time 
when she may stand in need of my services." 

And now when she felt so sure that her 
services were needed, when she thought that the 
country really did need saving, and that a vote 
for Fremont and " Free soil " might help to 
save it, she was not allowed to do her share. 

Voting was not the only thing that Oliver 

24 



Childhood at Forest Home 

could do and she could not. It was a matter 
of course that he should go to school and to 
college, but, as she said later, " the fate of his 
sisters was more misty in those days." She 
longed to be taught and to have a chance to 
improve herself, and her envy sometimes crept 
into her diary : — 

" Oliver gone to town to attend Taylor's concert. 
1 Nice young man, Fast young man ain't he getting to 
be ! I'll make up for this hermitacy — never you mind /' " 

And again :— 

" Oliver has gone to town to hear John G. Saxe lecture. 
I'll go sometime, do you hear?" 

Perhaps she had in her mind some vague idea 
of the work she was to do, and of how to 
" make up for this hermitacy " she was to go 
about the world spreading the love of freedom 
and fighting against the tyrannies of custom. 
But it was very vague. She knew only that 
she liked to be free and hated to grow up, and 
was full of restless ambitions. She used to lie 
on the prairie grass, as she often told in later 
years, and lift up her hands towards the sky, 
asking in her inmost spirit, " What is it, what 
is it that I am to do, O God?" and longing 
impatiently to know what she was to do, and to 

25 



Frances Willard 

set about doing it. But the process of growing 
up she hated. A boy always loves it, and is 
eager to be "a fast young man, and nice young 
man/' and go off by himself to lectures or 
entertainments, and a girl would love it too if 
growing up meant the same things for her. But 
to Frances Willard, as to many another girl, the 
most miserable day of her youth was the day 
on which she had to become a young lady. It 
came to her when she was sixteen, when her 
mother said that she had run wild almost too: 
long, and that she must at last put her hair 
up and her skirts down. A perfect outburst of 
revolt followed ; she knew that it was inevit- 
able, and that she could not do anything to ( 
prevent the misfortune, but the fury and rebel- 
lion in her heart were almost too great to be 
endured. It was too intense to be written 
directly in her Journal— she would have been 
ashamed to see it there ; and she only made 
the following entry : — 

"Father and Oliver go to town every day. Mother, 
Mary and I have to stay at home. 

" Feel crosser than I have in six months. Had 
a great time with my hair. Mother put it up ' woman 
fashion.' How I detest the fashion, and the way in which 
women are obliged to spend their time! Perfectly insipid ! " 

26 



L 



Childhood at Forest Home 

ut in her Autobiography she added :— 



/ 

/ " No girl ever went through a harder experience than I, 
'when my free out-of-door life had to cease, and the long 
skirts and clubbed hair-pins had to be endured. The half 
of that downheartedness has never been told, and never 
can be." 

To her friends she often described how, when 
the deed was done, the hairpins in place, and 
the skirt really lengthened, she ran off, blinded 
with tears and rage, falling over her skirt as 
she ran, with her eighteen hairpins standing on 
end and pushing against her aching head, and 
made her way miserably to the cellar, where 
she lay for hours sobbing and crying and feel- 
ing as if all the joy of life were over for ever.. 

Her unhappiness did not pass off for a long 
time, and she was so desperate that she even 
formed a wild plan for running away from home, 
and cherished it for several days. She was 
still only a child, for all her turned-up hair and 
her long skirts. 

During the next two months her Journals are 
full of sad little complaints. 

" Life is rather monotonous nowadays for the female 
members of Forest Home. 

" I stayed at home as usual and had ' the blues ' as 
usual." 

27 



Frances Willard 

She did not really recover her spirits until 
the school was started, when she found so much 
to do and to think of that she was able to 
forget that she could not climb into the Eagle's 
Nest any more. Chasing hogs down the road 
and shooting at a mark had been real things, but 
to be a young lady was only emptiness, and it 
was not until school and work had brought 
reality again that she could be comforted. 

When the Willards first came to Rock County 
there was no school near them at all, and Mrs. 
Willard herself taught the children. 

In the summer of 1848 she succeeded in 
arranging a small school in her own parlour, 
which was to be taught by a Miss Burdick, a 
girl of eighteen who had herself been at 
school in New York. There were only four 
pupils, and the lessons were quite informal and 
very delightful to Frank. The other two pupils 
were the Inman girls, Erne and Mattie, and 
Erne's goodness so much amazed Frances that, 
as she told her mother, " I just stepped on her 
toe at recess to see if she wouldn't frown, and 
sure enough she didn't ! " After this the fiery- 
tempered Frances admired Erne more than ever. 

Sarah Hill, Mrs. Willard's youngest sister, 

spent several months at Forest Home about this 

28 



Childhood at Forest Home 

time. She was a serious -minded lady, deeply 
impressed with the value of knowledge, and she 
inspired in Frances a good deal of awe. She 
taught the girls history and the derivation of 
words, and, as Frances said, " she was a devout 
Christian, and all her lessons led toward God." 
The Bible was one of her text-books of 
astronomy, and she taught them about the tides 
and the zodiac and the precession of the equin- 
oxes. All this fired Frank's imagination, and 
she " was so wrought upon that when I had 
to help get dinner one Sunday I fairly cried ! 
To come down to frying onions when I've been 
away among the rings of Saturn " was terrible. 
However, Miss Hill really was a devout Christian, 
and so she tried to impress Frances with the 
value of doing her daily duty as well as the 
value of knowing the stars. 

But with the exception of these lessons they 
had had no schooling until 1856, when Frances 
was sixteen. She was always very studious, and 
had read all the books her father possessed — 
Whittier, Shakespeare, and several volumes of 
travel, history, and biography — and all the news- 
papers and magazines they received. Of all the 
reading she did in her childhood, stories of 
adventure fascinated her most. As she said 

29 



Frances Willard 

years afterwards in her Journal, though she was 
a young lady and a teacher, they had lost none 
of their charm. 

"Read the 'White Chief just because I would. I 
have always been fascinated by stories describing wild, 
eventful life. Hunting stories especially attract me. Ever 
since I can remember it has been better to me to read 
them than to enjoy any other luxury. When I was 
sixteen, I was wild on the subject, and wrote a story for 
myself which I thought unsurpassable ! ( The Swiss 
Family Robinson ' excited me beyond measure, and after 
reading 'Robinson Crusoe' I planned retreating to an 
island in Rock River. . . . And pirate and nautical stories ! 
— I cannot tell what a charm they have for me even now. 
I can't help it, it is my nature. . . . What a hunter I 
should have been if God had thought it best that I should 
be a man ! " 

But next to her love of adventure stories was 
her love of politics. The day when the papers 
came was always a great day in these far-off 
western communities. The farmers would come 
in from miles round, gather at the principal 
store, and hitch their horses to the fence outside, 
eager to hear what the Administration was doing, 
or to read the campaign speeches. Then they 
would stay for hours discussing the news, 
standing or lounging about, smoking J their long 
pipes, and uttering their very shrewd comments 

30 



Childhood at Forest Home 

on the course of events. Frances also was 
keenly interested in politics, and used to rush 
eagerly to her father when he came back from 
town to ask him for the news. They were all 
Free Soilers, ardent in their opposition to any 
extension of slave territory, and eager for 
gradual emancipation. They had read and wept 
over "Uncle Tom's Cabin" when it came out in 
the National Era, and in Oberlin Mr. Willard 
had himself sheltered a runaway slave in his 
cellar, and had afterwards helped her on to the 
next stage of the Underground Railway ; and 
this adventure gave a great vividness to their 
realisation of the problems that faced the whole 
country. 

The papers they read were the Morning Star, 
the Democratic Standard, the Little Pilgrim, the 
Mother's Assistant, and the Prairie Farmer, all 
weekly papers, and also Harper's Monthly 
^Magazine, which at that time published many of 
the English classics as serials. To these sources 
of instruction Oliver, when he went to college, 
added many more. He was a clever and 
serious-minded boy, and brought home with him 
every term books of travel and history which 
delighted Frank beyond measure. He went 
first to the " Academy " at Janesville, and then 

31 



Frances Willard 

to Beloit College, a Theological School only 
twenty miles away, whose " commencement exer- 
cises " were the pride and glory of the whole 
neighbourhood and an excitement only rivalled 
by the annual fair. Of course Frances was 
very jealous of these splendours ; when she 
heard his tales of the lectures and the speeches, 
and thought of all the things she wanted to 
know, she grew more impatient than ever of 
the " insipid way " in which it seemed that her 
life must be spent. But after all her chance 
came, for a real school was to be built in their 
neighbourhood, and she was to go to it. She 
was perfectly wild with delight, and could talk 
and think of nothing else. 

" Father returned with the — to me — vitally important 
news that the school-house is actually going to be built 
immediately and Mr. Hodge is going to teach school." 

Mr. Jonathan Hodge was Mr. Willard's 
nearest neighbour and greatest friend. He was 
a graduate of the University of Yale, and had 
been* a tutor at Oberlin for many years . When 
his health broke down, he had followed Josiah 
Willard to the West, bringing with him his large 
family of children, and now they were all to 
go to school together, and, as Frances said, they 

32 



Childhood at Forest Home 

were all to " have advantages just like other 
folks ! M There were about ten other pupils, 
who came from the farms round about, and they 
all seemed to have loved their work intensely. 
Frances was the most ecstatic of them all. For 
days and even weeks before it began her Journal 
was full of the excitement : — 

"Our school-house was finished last Saturday. Hurrah ! 
Now for school days and a chance to improve oneself! 
Fearfully lonesome in the afternoon. I long for school to 
begin to relieve this tedious unendurable monotony, if 
for nothing else." 

On the last day before school began she 
wrote :— 

"Jan. 19, 1856. — I did usual work, brought in wood- 
box full of wood, did up my hair, &c, and finished my 
chemise. Let there be a Te Deum sung in honour of the 
occasion. I am very terribly glad, exceedingly, excrucia- 
tingly glad." 

To this she added three years later a pencil 
note in the margin :— 

" What a record for a girl of sixteen to make ! " 

She goes on :— 

" On Monday morning we go to school. I at least in 
high hopes and great anticipations. Hurrah ! This is the 

33 d 



Frances Willard 

last day at home for a great while. Father and I went 
down and saw the school-house. It is very pretty. Got 
all our school books together in mother's satchel all ready 
for school." 

It was only her enthusiasm that made the 
school-house " very pretty," however. It was 
a tiny square log building set down among the 
trees on the bank of the river, but to Frances 
it was a " temple of learning," and a place as 
sacred as Yale or Harvard, and in preparing 
for it she lost all the melancholy that had come 
to her with her young ladyhood. She went 
back, indeed, to perfectly childish ways, and 
was thoroughly happy again. 

Her diary tells of the first day of school :— 

" Monday 21. — Mary and I got up long before light and 
got ready for school. Our tin pail of dinner, satchel of 
books, hoods and cloaks, are all waiting for us. Not time 
to go yet. . . ." 

It is easy to imagine the scene. A cold 
winter morning, with the snow all round the 
house, and the daylight just coming over the 
prairie ; the two girls making all their small 
preparations and wandering restlessly about — 
now writing a hasty scrawl in a Journal, now 
going to the window to look for daylight, and 

34 



Childhood at Forest Home 

now to the clock to see if nine o'clock had not 
come. 

She wrote of it, in "My Happy Half- 
Century " : — 

" We hardly tasted our breakfast, and were so uneasy 
that long before the time, Loren yoked the big oxen to 
the long ' bobsled ' and he and Oliver carried us to school. 
The doors were not yet open, so we went to Professor 
Hodge's, which was near by, got the key, made the fire, 
and were the first to take possession. Oliver cracked the 
whip and ' geed up ' the oxen, saying, ' Well, I hope you'll 
enjoy what you've got yourself into,' and I shouted, 
1 We've got a Yale graduate to teach us, and Beloit can't 
beat that.'" 

" At last Professor Hodge appeared, in his long-tailed 
blue coat with brass buttons, carrying an armful of school 
books and a dinner bell in his hand. He stood on the 
steps and rang the bell, long, loud, and merrily. My 
heart bounded and I said inside of it, so that nobody 
heard, * At last we are going to school all by ourselves, 
Mary and I, and are going to have advantages like other 
folks, just as mother said we should ! O ! goody-goody- 
goody!'" 

At the end of the day she made a very satis- 
factory entry in the diary : — 

" I feel to-night satisfied with the world, myself, and the 
rest of mankind." 

35 



Frances Willard 

And the next day she wrote : — 

"Just returned from school. Enjoyed it as much as 
ever — ardour not in the least diminished." 

The ardour, indeed, lasted as long as school 
" kept." They studied arithmetic, geography, 
spelling, reading, and writing, and when Frances 
got to the head of the line she recorded it with 
immense pride in her journal. They went to 
school at nine and stayed till 4.30, taking their 
midday dinner with them. The other children 
did the same, and they must have had great 
fun at " noon recess." Frances described this 
as follows : — 

" Played blindman's buff at noon. Spread our table (a 
desk) with our tablecloth (an old shawl) and put thereon 
our dinner — ham, fried cakes, bread and butter, cookies, 
apples, mincepie, and water. I like school very much. 
We had hard lessons, but find we can conquer them." 

On Saturdays and Sundays she said she was 
" lonesome for school," and that she " longed 
for school again," and when she had " very, 
very hard lessons," she added in her Journal : 
" Pleasant day. So are all my days." She was 
very proud of the fact that they did not miss 
one day or hour of school during the whole 
winter — though sometimes it was so cold that 
they " expected to most freeze going there." 

36 



Childhood at Forest Home 

But with all this studiousness she was still very; 
young, and in fact school seemed to have, 
brought her back from young ladyhood to a 
more normal childishness. When one of the 
men made a pistol for her she christened it 
Defiance, and proclaimed to her Journal : " It 
is a fine one. Everything between a quail and 
buffalo beware." And she took it to school, 
where it " caused a great commotion ! " 

When the spring came, the roads between 
Forest Home and the school turned into " regular 
torrents," and soon after that Mr. Hodge closed 
the school to spend his time on his own farm 1 . 
The children were so sorry that they got up 
a petition which every one in the school (except 
one girl and his own children) gladly signed, 
asking him to open the school in the summer. 
On the last day they had closing exercises, 
speeches, compositions, &c, to which their 
parents listened. As Frances said in h'etf 
diary : — 

" It all passed off very pleasantly. Mr. Hodge made a 
short closing speech, commending our diligence and con- 
stant attendance. We presented the petition, which he 
read publicly, and expressed his satisfaction. So we took 
our books, came out of the house, and the school for the 
winter of '56 was done for ever" 

37 



Frances Willard 

The summer of 1856 passed as the other 
years had passed, in busy, active, out-of-door 
life. But Frances was now growing up. She 
kept her Journal very irregularly, and though 
she assured it, in a very penitent mood, that 
she was " just the same girl I used to was, old 
Journal ! " she probably was not. The first part 
of the next winter " school kept " again, and , 
her only comment was the sententious remark : 
" I would not exchange the stores which I have 
gathered into the granary of the mind during 
the last three months for a great, great 
deal." 

During this year she read many of the books 
Oliver brought back from college, and they 
certainly increased her restless ambitions. They 
had an effect on her style, too, and though she 
wrote in 1856, "Went horseback ride with 
Oliver. Came home through the woods after the 
sheep. The scenery was— but bah ! no rhap- 
sodies ! " yet she did not escape certain high- 
flown pitfalls (from which she never afterwards 
entirely recovered), for the next day she wrote :—> 

" The autumn sun is showing his face splendidly in 
a leave-taking. Summer, with her genial sun, pleasant 
showers, mild evenings, and verdure-clad prairies, is 
hieing away to the South." 

38 



Childhood at Forest Home 

During this summer she and Mary had had 
their first real experience of life away from home, 
and very homesick it made them. They had 
been once before to visit their grandparents and 
cousins at Churchville, but at a time when they 
were too young to notice very much difference 
in the places in which they built mud castles 
or snow men, but now they were old enough 
both to be homesick, and to be ashamed of the 
feeling. The place to which they went was only 
six miles from home, to be sure ; it was to the 
house of Mr. and Mrs. Peleg S. Whitman, where 
they were sent for a month to learn to speak 
French and play the piano ! It was there that 
Frances read her first novels, to her intense 
delight. "Jane Eyre," "Shirley," and "Villette" 
were the only three she read, however, and the 
latter she never finished, for as she was sitting 
on the doorstep entirely absorbed in it, her father 
happened to come by. To his mind it was very 
wrong that children— pr any one else— should 
amuse themselves with tales of fiction, and he 
forbade her to read another word of it— which 
command she obeyed, although with an anger 
she did not dare to express. 

The next winter they went to Churchville again 
with their father to see their cousins. Then for 

39 



Frances Willard 

some months they lived in Janesville, where 
Frank and Mary went to a " select school/' and 
studied physiology and map -drawing, and where 
Frank became editor of the school paper. And 
there they heard Elder Knapp, the great 
revivalist, preach in the Baptist Church ; but, 
as Frances said, " we did not come out as Chris- 
tians." Their religious experience had hardly yet 
begun, but they were changing and growing up. 
Frances longed to go to college, and even Mary 
was made restless by the travelling she had done, 
and felt that there was a great deal in the world 
she would like to see. 

And so Mr. Willard decided to send his 
.daughters to the Milwaukee Female College, 
where Aunt Sarah Hill was teaching, and in the 
spring of 1857 they went off, full of the wildest 
excitement about this their first independent 
experiment. 



40 



CHAPTER II 

EDUCATION AND THE SEARCH FOR " CULTURE " 

It is delightful to think of the eagerness with 
which Frances and Mary prepared to go to 
Milwaukee. At last they were to see something 
of the world, and learn something of its know- 
ledge, and, of course, their delight was un- 
bounded. Frances was seventeen and Mary 
fifteen, but they behaved like small children. 
They bothered Aunt Sarah with endless questions 
of what it would be like, and spent many hours 
preparing and packing their clothes and their 
books and possessions. They went about saying 
goodbye to the trees, and the river, and the 
" Eagle's nest " ; and then they were unex- 
pectedly miserable when the time to start actually, 
came. Even the excitement of going to school 
could not make up for leaving mother behind, 
and as their father drove them in to Janesville 
they probably looked out on the prairie with 
very tear-stained eyes. 

41 



Frances Willard 

When they reached Milwaukee, however, they 
must soon have been comforted. To live in a 
town was in itself a new experience for them, 
and Frances tells how she sat by her window 
watching the lighting of the street lamps with 
the greatest delight. 

They boarded, with their aunt, in a house " in 
which the Christian atmosphere reminded them 
daily of Forest Home," and every day they went 
to the Milwaukee Female College. This was 
a large Congregational school founded by 
Catherine Beecher, the sister of Harriet Beecher 
Stowe. It was a very religious school, and 
the girls behaved with almost unnatural good- 
ness. They were expected to be good, they 
expected themselves to be good, and good they 
were, and they seriously tried to be " perfect 
in punctuality, behaviour, and lessons " ! Frank 
soon attained this satisfactory state, and both 
she and Mary were entirely happy while they 
were there. They made many friends, and 
delighted in feeling that they were getting an 
education. This they really were doing, for Miss 
Hill was a most interesting teacher, and Frances 
began to work so hard and so enthusiastically 
that her aunt was afraid for her health. It 

was here that Frank saw her first woman speaker, 

42 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

a .queer, short-haired, half-crazy spiritualist, whom 
Aunt Sarah took her to hear because of her 
" everlasting curiosity," and for whose ramblings 
Frances felt a sort of shamed pity. 

Under her aunt's influence she now began to 
take a greater interest in religion, and even went 
to Bible-classes with pleasure. In the midst of 
the record of this serious and ambitious time it 
is pleasant to come upon a note of the fifty 
cents sent to them by Mike Carey, their father's 
" hired man." This was the only money the 
girls had to spend during the three months they 
were away from home, and with her share of it 
Frances, after due deliberation, bought a ticket 
to a menagerie, a notebook, and some pepper- 
mint candy. 

Mr. and Mrs. Willard came in July to see 
how their daughters had progressed, and to take 
them home for the summer. Frank's journal 
gives a glimpse of the rush of the examinations 
and the excitements of the end of term :— 

" Milwaukee, July 16, 1857. — Terrible times preparing 
for examination. I have studied hard, and ought to do 
well. How will it be ? I pause for a reply." 

"July 23. — Left the city at half-past ten. Felt fully as 
bad as when I left home, even worse." 

43 



Frances Willard 

The following September Frank was eighteen. 
She was as full of joy over her birthday cake 
as if she were just eight, and she danced about 
wildly to celebrate her coming of age. She 
wrote an " ode " for the occasion, which showed 
that she still loved liberty as much as when she 
tamed her cow :— 

"The last year has passed : 
The last month, week, day, hour, and moment. 
For eighteen years, quelling all thoughts 
And wishes of my own, 
I've been obedient to the powers that were. 
Not that the yoke was heavy to be borne, 
And grievous, 

Do I glory that 'tis removed — 
For lighter ne'er did parents fond 
Impose on child. 
It was a silver chain : 
But the bright adjective 
Takes not away the clanking sound 
That follows it." 

To put her freedom to the test, and to make 
quite sure of it, she settled down, towards even- 
ing, in her mother's rocking-chair to read 
" Ivanhoe." No doubt she did not attend to a 
word of it, for to read a novel in the face oif 
her father's opposition was a tremendous asser- 
tion of independence. Presently he came up to 

44 




FRANCES WILLARD. 
Age 18. 



To face page 44. 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

her and said very seriously : "I thought I told 
you not to read novels, Frances." " So you did, 
father; but you forget what day it is." " What 
day, indeed ! I should like to know if the day 
has anything to do with the deed ! " " Indeed, 
it has . I am eighteen— J am of age— I am now to 
do what / think right." 

As Frances goes on to relate in her Auto- 
biography—somewhat triumphant still over the 
incident-^Mr. Willard was " dumbfounded." But 
he finally decided to laugh and let her go her 
own way-^which was certainly the wisest thing 
to do I 

After this success it was very disappointing to 
Frank to find that he would not let them go back 
to Milwaukee. The school was not sectarian 
enough to suit his rather strict Methodist views, 
and so they stayed at Forest Home for the 
winter. But they did not cease to dream of 
school, and of going on with their education, 
and they probably studied pretty hard by them- 
selves, and constantly bothered their father to 
look out for some other place to which they 
might go. 

In the North-Western 'Christian Advocate they 
read of Evanston, the new Methodist suburb of 
Chicago, and of the colleges for boys and girls 

45 



Frances Willard 

that had been started there. The North -Western 
University was already flourishing, and the North- 
western Female College, which afterwards 
became part of the University, was at that time 
a private institution managed by Professor 
William P. Jones and his wife. They heard on 
all sides glowing accounts of the advantages to 
be had there, and at last Mr. Willard went him- 
self to inspect the place. To Frank's unbounded 
joy he came home with a favourable verdict, 
and on the 2nd of March, 1858, the two> 
girls set out again, still eager for learning, and 
still excited at the thought of all there might 
be in the large world outside of home. 

Evanston at that time was a small village 
with scarcely five hundred inhabitants. It is 
now a well-planned town with many miles of 
regular symmetrical avenues of trees, bordered 
with neat grass, and it seems as if it had always 
been a civilised place. The houses stand back 
from the avenues in their own gardens of shrubs 
and flowers, and the lake washes up against a 
very tidy shore. It is true that almost all the 
houses are pretentiously ugly, with contorted 
Gothic shapes and curious pinnacles and devices 
of stone ; but they are comfortable, wealthy - 
looking houses, well hidden by the magnificent 

46 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

trees, and the whole impression of the place is 
that of a flourishing, orderly suburb. Some of 
the original wooden houses are still standing, 
however, in their pleasant simplicity, with their 
sociable " porches " in front, and these are 
almost the only things that now give any idea 
of the village of Evanston as it was in 1858 
when Frank and Mary came there to school. It 
was then just a plain new village set down 
among the trees and the swamps— a few wooden 
houses, one or two (i stores,' 1 a " long oblong 
structure with papered walls that served for a 
church," and the " four proud public buildings 
that were to make the village famous." Evan- 
ston was then the hope of the north-west, a 
village planned to be " the Methodist Athens 
of the Prairies," where the learning and culture 
of the old world were to be reconciled with the 
energy arid enterprise of the new, and where 
literature, rhetoric, science, and Christian prin- 
ciples were to find their surest foundation. 
Serious young men from the farms of Illinois 
and Wisconsin flocked to the schools, and those 
who came to settle were religious people, who 
were tired of the hard and lonely pioneer life, 
and who hoped to find there congenial compan- 
ionship. They were for the most part fairly 

47 



Frances Willard 

wealthy and very earnest families, and, as one 
of the first inhabitants said, they lived in " happy 
days, when they knew every one in the town, 
and all the Christians of the place filled up the 
meeting-house." 

The University had been planned in 1850. As 
Miss Willard said, " Evanston began in a prayer- 
meeting. Half a dozen earnest Christian men 
met by appointment ... in Chicago. Their 
object, often talked and prayed about before, 
was the founding of a University that should be 
a fountain of Christian scholarship for the north- 
west. The Rev. Zodac Hall led in prayer." 
This meeting came to the conclusion that " the 
interests of sanctified learning require the imme- 
diate establishing of a University in the north- 
west under the patronage of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church." They also hoped to estab- 
lish a Biblical Institute for the training of 
Methodist ministers in the same village, and this 
was opened in 1855. The founders of Evanston 
were determined that their schemes should have 
every chance of success, and they therefore 
included in the University charter a provision 
that no intoxicating liquor should ever be sold 
within four miles of the college campus. 

The enterprise began well. No sooner were 

48 



Education and the Search for "Culture 



» 



the buildings begun, the streets laid out, and 
the lots put up to sale than the people began 
to come, for the north-west felt the need of 
a University. 

In 1856 the North -West Female College was 
opened. This college was not part of the 
University, for the thought of female education 
had had no share in the hopes of the good 
men who had prayed so earnestly for the edu- 
cation of the north-west. It was a private 
enterprise, undertaken and financed by Professor 
W. P. Jones and his wife, and it was not greatly 
welcomed by the Trustees of the University. 
They feared, of course, that anything so radical 
and unscriptural as a female college must 
endanger the reputation of their village, and they 
no doubt greatly rejoiced when the first build- 
ing was burnt to the ground. But Prof. Jones 
was not to be discouraged by misfortune or 
disapproval. He realised that Evanston, where 
the town and the University were both starting 
new together, was a very favourable place in 
which to try the experiment of the higher educa- 
tion of women. And so he built his college, 
and rebuilt it when it was burned, and gathered 
his professors, and made his rules, and welcomed 
all the pupils that came. 

49 e 



Frances Willard 

Of course in those days no one quite knew 
what a women's college should be, and as one 
of the first Deans said, " it was not unusual for 
mothers to ask if teachers accompanied young 
ladies on their walks, if the bureau drawers of 
the students were inspected at regular intervals, 
and if the Saturday mending was under some 
one's supervision. The next visitor might be 
an independent young woman who would 
announce with plain decisiveness that she had 
come for college work only, and desired no 
limitations that were not equally imposed upon 
young men ! " 

But with all their difficulties and crudities the 
new University and the Women's College began 
their work proudly and hopefully, and have 
grown and extended until now the North- Western 
University is one of the largest and richest of 
the co -educational institutions in the United 
States. Different as it now is from the Euro- 
pean ideal of a University, with its hatred of 
specialisation, and its chairs of rhetoric, farm- 
ing, and dentistry, it was even more different 
in 1858. Then its students studied to reconcile 
science and the Bible, worked faithfully over 
Butler's " Analogy," and were well versed in the 
principles of English composition and astronomy. 

50 



Education and the Search for " Culture" 

They all went to Bible Classes, and they all 
hoped to become Christians, but they had, none 
the less, the delightful happy years that people 
at college must have, no matter how good 
they are. 

The words " school " and " college " are inter- 
changeable in America, and in those early days 
the female college was really little more than a 
boarding-school. The people who came had 
very little training, and passed no examinations, 
and they came at any age from twelve to 
twenty. But they all came with an earnest 
wish to study, and so the experiment of the 
higher education of women prospered. 

Mary's Journal describes their early start from 
Forest Home, their " inward sighs," their 
journey to Chicago, and their naive admiration 
of the " really beautiful college building." She 
tells also of their labours to install themselves in 
their room, tacking down carpets and unpack- 
ing trunks, and of how they could " hope and 
guess we shall like to live here " ; also of the 
homesickness that made her glad that their room 
was " quite pleasantly situated overlooking the 
railroad track, where cars pass often on the very 
road that connects us with our home ! " 

Both the girls were immediately popular. 

5i 



Frances Willard 

•Within a month Frank was head of her classes, 
editor of the college paper, and leader of a band 
" of ne'er-do-weels " that had for four months 
a gloriously wicked career. This was the only 
time in her life that she gave way to the enter- 
prising recklessness that made her company so 
exciting, and it is pleasant to think of the 
future reformer perched on the steeple of the 
building when she should have been in the class- 
room, and deserting a Bible lesson to have her 
hair cut short ! It is equally pleasant to 
remember that all her life she had a passion- 
necessarily concealed— for horse-racing. She 
knew all the favourites, the odds, and the 
winners, though, of course, she did not ever 
dream of laying a bet, and even thought it 
wicked to watch a race, after the first exciting 
day in Paris when she discovered what it was 
like. 

After all, her career as a ne'er-do-weel was 
almost equally innocent, for though she deter- 
mined not to keep strictly to the seventy 
arduous rules of the establishment, it was only 
that she might behave well according to a law 
of her own ; and Professor Jones felt that he 
could rely on her influence in the school as on 
the whole a good one. She had no toleration 

52 



Education and the Search for " Culture" 

for the silly escapades and moonlight walks with 
University boys which attracted some of her 
companions, nor would she ever share in any- 
thing that seemed to cast disrespect upon 
religion. But she was a great inventor of sport, 
and, as Mary Bannister described her, " she 
came to be something of a beau herself, a 
certain dashing recklessness about her having 
as much fascination for the average schoolgirl 
as if she had been a senior in the University, 
instead of the carefully dressed, neatly gloved 
young lady who took the highest credit marks 
in recitation, but was known in the privacy of 
one or two of the girls' rooms to assume the 
airs of a bandit, flourish an imaginary sword, 
and converse in a slashing way supposed to 
be known only among pirates with their 
fellows. " 

She was very striking-looking then, as always, 
with a peculiarly vivid and eager face, large 
serious eyes, and golden hair. It is no wonder 
that she made an attractive bandit ! 

After four months of this reckless career, in 
which Mary took no part, they went back to 
Wisconsin for the summer. And then Frank 
took possession of the schoolhouse and had her 
first experience of teaching. 

53 



Frances Willard 

Between Frank and her mother there was 
always the most perfect confidence, and such 
mutual understanding that, as she described it, 
" I could not tell where her thought ended and 
mine began." And so, of course, Mrs. Willard 
knew all about the pirates, and no doubt she 
was rather troubled by them, and felt she would 
like to be with her daughter during the next 
winter. And she was tired, too, of the loneli- 
ness of the farm and the hard work, and longed 
for the sort of life she could find at Evanston., 
She therefore persuaded her husband to move 
there in the winter, when it was time for Frank 
and Mary to go back to school. He found 
work in a banking business in Chicago, and 
they all lived together in a house they called 
" Swampscot " on the edge of the lake and the 
swamps. Frank and her father planted round 
it a great many trees and shrubs that they had 
brought from Forest Home, and they spent 
there three very happy years. Mr. Willard 
entered at once into the life of the village, and 
took an important part in planning its develop- 
ment, attending especially to the proper planting 
of the elm and maple avenues. Mrs. Willard 
delighted in the comparative leisure she now 
acquired, and the whole family rejoiced in the 

54 



Education and the Search for "Culture 



5? 



friends they found, and the atmosphere of piety 
and intellectual endeavour in which they lived. 

Frank worked harder than ever, and, being 
at home, she left the ranks of the " ne'er-do- 
weels " and turned her mind to less childish 
things. She " often rose at four o'clock, and 
more than once has been found on the sitting- 
room floor asleep with her head in Butler's 
' Analogy.' " She also began to be troubled over 
religion, and there was one element in her life 
and surroundings at this time which she found 
it somewhat difficult to meet, and this was the 
often recurring revivals in the Methodist Church. 

The whole neighbourhood would be stirred at 
these times of revival, and nearly every one she 
knew would be seeking either salvation or 
sanctification . The seekers would go to the 
altar to pray— that is, to the front benches in 
the Church— and earnestness in religion was 
naturally measured by this outward manifesta- 
tion. But for some reason Frances could not 
bring herself to this point, and it caused her 
much heart-searching. Especially was this the 
case when, in one of these revivals, her father 
went forward to the altar, and sought for and 
believed he obtained the blessing of sanctifica- 
tion. Mr. Willard was a very positive man, and 

55 



Frances Willard 

held any views he adopted with great earnest- 
ness, and he never gave up the blessing he felt 
he had secured. Naturally he wanted his 
daughters to seek and obtain the same thing ; 
but Frances was too honest to adopt the views 
of even her own father unless she herself was 
also convinced, and she could not bring herself 
to go to the altar while she felt doubtful as to 
its efficacy and the reality of the blessing 
sought. And so she began to think she had 
doubts of Christianity, and then she had doubts 
of her doubts ; but above all she knew that she 
did not feel right. This was the great difficulty 
with almost all the young Methodists of that 
day. Feeling was the one criterion of salvation, 
and if you could not feel saved there was no 
hope for you. Of course, it was very difficult 
to feel correctly. It was difficult to feel your- 
self a sinner, honestly deserving damnation, 
when you knew how hard you tried to be good ; 
it was difficult to feel the importance of sancti- 
flcation, when life was so happy as it was, and 
when everything went so well ; and above all, 
it was difficult to feel that you loved God all the 
time, when your head was so full of other 
things. This lack of feeling was taken to be 
a sign that you were all wrong, and consequently 

56 



Education and the Search for " Culture 



55 



nothing was easier than to be troubled by 
religion. Professor Jones, the Principal of the 
College, watched over Frank's religious develop- 
ment very carefully. In describing her as she 
was at this time, he says :— 



jT There were students' prayer-meetings, class-meetings, 
and missionary-meetings, revivals came and went, and 
few except Miss Willard failed to take a lively interest 
in them. Still, she was not indifferent." 

At last he asked in church for prayers on 
her behalf. When she heard this she was 
" considerably wrought upon," for he had said 
she was an infidel, but she considered herself 
an inquirer. Soon afterwards, at his request, 
she did go to the altar. But the same day she 
wrote to him the following letter :— 

" PROFESSOR, — I thank you very much for the interest 
you manifest in me, and at the same time I feel very 
guilty. 

" I do not think you know how hard my heart is, 
how far I am from feeling anything. I see I have no 
excuse to offer for my conduct. Three facts stand out 
before me as facts, nothing more. I view them calmly, 
coldly. They are these : I am a great sinner : it is a 
sin greater than I can comprehend to doubt God . . . 
or to refuse submission to Him for a moment. I have 
no excuse for delaying to become a Christian. The 
third fact is, I am as cold as an iceberg, as unconcerned as 

57 



Frances Willard 

a stone. I view it simply as a truth. . . . You will say 
that I shall feel in hell (a hard word) ... I acknowledge 
it. If there is a God, a heaven, a hell, a devil, then I 
am undone. ... If I were to pray I should say, if I 
were candid, ' Oh God, if there be a God, save my soul, 
ii I have a soul ! ' 

"... And now, in view of all these facts I ask, 
respectfully, yet earnestly, ought I to go to the altar, 
to kneel before the Christian's God, to hear the Christian's 
prayer, careless and unconcerned ? . . . I am willing to 
attend church, though it interferes very much with my 
progress in science. I am willing to go if you think it 
will do any good, but until I feel differently I dare not go 
to the altar again. When I do I will go unasked. 
" I am, 
" Gratefully and respectfully yours, 
"Frances E. Willard." 

It is rather pathetic to think of the vehemence 
with which good people in those days longed 
to feel wicked, and the agonies they suffered 
because they could not. Frances, however, was 
too sensible to suffer very long, and she soon 
directed most of her religious energies to the 
effort to become a really satisfactory person. 
She made such very praiseworthy resolutions, 
and tried so hard to carry them out, that by- 
and-by she forgot to worry over how she felt. 
She became even a little priggish at this time, 
as when she resolved " to have two objects, a 

58 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

life-object and a daily, hourly object/' and " to 
inform myself first on the subjects of import- 
ance of which I feel most ignorant." 

But it was very natural to become priggish 
in such a place, and it is only wonderful that 
she remained humble enough to be " mortified " 
by her " stupidity " now and again, considering 
that she was a leader among the girls, a 
favourite with the professors, and by far the 
best student in the college. She was chosen 
Valedictorian, and was to have made the fare- 
well speech for her class at the commencement 
exercises, but she had typhoid fever in the 
spring, and could not graduate. This was a 
bitter disappointment to her, but she had to 
submit to it, and when she recovered she settled 
down to live at home and go on with her 
studies by herself until Mary should graduate ; 
when, as she wrote in her diary, she hoped to 
be able to earn her own living, pay her own 
way, and try to be of use in the world. It 
was during this illness that Frank's religious 
doubts were finally settled. Her experiences are 
hard to understand if one does not remember 
how supreme an importance attached to the 
ceremony of " coming out for Christ." The 
agonies that every boy and girl suffered in try- 

59 



Frances Willard 

ing to be " converted " were only equalled by 
the difficulty of making public confession when 
that happy state was reached, and the whole 
matter weighed heavily both upon the young 
people themselves and upon their parents and 
teachers. 

When Frank was in danger of death she felt 
a conflict over her soul. Two voices urged her, 
the one to be good and surrender to Christ, the 
other to be bad and keep her independent posi- 
tion. She yielded to the good voice, and " said 
yes to God," and this brought peace to her mind. 
As soon as she was able to go out again she 
publicly joined the Church on probation. Pro- 
fessor Jones describes the scene, which must 
have been one of impressive sincerity :— 

" It was Sunday evening. A large congregation in 
the Methodist church had listened to an ordinary sermon, 
and seemed somewhat impatient for dismissal, when the 
pastor, to the surprise of every one, extended an invitation 
to those who wished to unite with the Church on pro- 
bation to meet him at the altar. The revival wave of the 
last winter had rolled by ; there had been no special 
meetings ; not a ripple of religious excitement was dis- 
coverable on the smooth current of the Church. No 
one was expected to respond to the pastor's invitation. 
A moment's pause, and a young woman moved out into 
the main aisle, and approached the altar. Instantly all 

60 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

eyes converged on her. No sign or faintest token of 
doubt clouded that countenance now. There was that 
firm expression which clinches faith and says, * Here I 
stand. I can do no other.' The effect on the congrega- 
tion was electrical. For a few moments the solemnity 
of the occasion held all other feelings in check. Then 
some one began the doxology, l Praise God, from whom 
all blessings flow,' and it was sung as if the very stars 
were expected to join in the chorus." 

But this was not the end. For fourteen nights 
in succession she knelt at the altar expecting 
some utter transformation, some part of heaven 
to be placed in her inmost heart. She " prayed 
and agonised/' but what she sought did not 
occur. Then orte night when she went to her 
room baffled, weary, and discouraged, it came 
to her quietly but surely that this was not the 
way, that her conversion was already accom- 
plished since she wished to be saved, and that 
there was no need for agony or transformation, 
She therefore became a probationer, and a year 
later was baptized into the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. From this time onwards she led an 
intensely spiritual life, and troubled no more 
about her beliefs. She trusted in her favourite 
text, " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace 
whose mind is stayed on Thee," and in that 

perfect peace she lived, trying only to be as 

61 



Frances Willard 

good as the ideal Character she set before 
herself, and anxious to be always about her 
Master's business. 

Among the many religious helps with which 
Christians of that day were surrounded, not 
the least helpful, and at the same time the 
most delightful, were summer camp meetings, 
which the Willard family frequently attended. 
These were meetings held for ten days or two 
weeks in some secluded country spot amid grass 
and trees, when those who came lived in the 
utmost simplicity in tents, and were free from 
the business and cares of ordinary life. They 
met together to sing and pray, and to devote 
themselves to a search after the deeper things 
of God. There was generally a large central 
tent where all could gather together, and here 
meetings of all kinds were continually held from 
early morning until night : preaching meetings, 
prayer-meetings; inquirers' meetings, singing- 
meetings, testimony-meetings, anything that 
could draw together earnest seekers, or could 
help to strengthen the tie of Christian brother- 
hood. Besides these more public occasions, 
private meetings were continually held in many 
of the tents, where anxious inquirers could state 

their difficulties and could find answers to their 

62 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

.questions. The utmost freedom and good-fellow- 
ship prevailed, and while they were seasons of 
deeply religious interest, they were also times 
of great social enjoyment. It is difficult for 
any one who has not been to one of these camp 
meetings to understand the delight of them. To 
be delivered from all 'the hampering convention- 
alities of ordinary life, and to feel free to be 
simple and natural and at your ease in the 
midst of Nature's trees and grass would be of 
itself enough to make one happy. 

But besides this inducement to think of 
religion, Frank was led 'to think of it because 
it was the greatest intellectual interest of the 
University, as well as the private spiritual con- 
cern of each person. And so she went cheer- 
fully to church four times on Sunday, besides 
teaching in the Sunday School, and she duly 
noted in her Journal the four sermons she 
always heard. She attended lectures proving 
the evidences of design in the Universe, refut- 
ing pantheism, and reconciling geology with 
the Mosaic account of the Creation ; she studied 
to find whether baptism by immersion was 
rational and correct, investigated the origin of 
evil, and the doctrine of the Trinity, and inter- 
ested herself in Church government. 

63 



Frances Willard 

When her brother Oliver decided to be a 
minister she was overjoyed, and followed his 
doings at the Biblical Institute with great 
admiration, and shared in all his enthusiasms 
and interests. 

'Her Journals of these years are very full of 
religion :— 

"Dec. 1859. I think each member of the University 
is equally bound to sustain — do his or her part towards 
sustaining . . . such social-religious meetings as it would 
be a sin, a shame and a scandal for the Church not to 
support. ... It is very wrong that Professing Christians 
take so little interest in these matters. 

" At Class Meeting I gave a very sad account of myself 
— as the truth forced me to do. I'm not good, and I 
don't act like a Christian. But what is worst of all 
is that I know I might do better . . . the only reason 
I don't do so is that I forget. 

"Is it not true that we have forgotten our Creator? 
We who are young are thinking of our studies, our 
friends, our pleasures, our plans, our prospects. If 
awakened on the Sabbath Day by warnings from 
the Pulpit, does not the fear pass off with the close 
of the sacred hour to recur no more until the Sabbath 
again returns ? " 

'Her comments on her lecture notes are some- 
times amusing :— 

"Geology teaches that death was in the world before 
sin, which is contrary to the Bible. But it is nowhere 

64 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

stated in the Bible that sin was the cause of the death of 
any save man : he only has sinned. Any other idea is a 
superstition and without foundation. We have learned 
it from our Grandmothers, and not from the Bible. 
Lecturer didn't say whether Grandfathers taught us this 
notion or not." 

With the years at school she had only grown 
more interested in the woman question, and, of 
course, now she was troubled by the views of 
St. Paul. It is easy to imagine the interest 
with which she read and reread those chapters; 
which seemed to her so bigoted, and to under- 
stand how first she was furious, and then she- 
was unhappy, and finally 'scornfully indignant :— 

^ Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, 
as unto the Lord. 

" For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ 
is the head of the church : and He is the Saviour of the body. 

" Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so 
let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing." 

This was more than she could bear, and she 
wrote her protest in her Journal :— 

" If I truly believed that the fifth chapter of Ephesians 
(22-24) was to be understood literally, and applied to me 
if I am any man's wife, I should think the evidence 
sufficient that God was unjust, unreasonable, a tyrant, 
But, as it is, I do not. This is my way of thinking, 
and I have a right to it. That right I will maintain." 

65 F 



Frances Willard 

It was not only St. Paul who roused her to 
maintaining her right to such opinions. 
Margaret Fuller's writings, which she discovered 
about this time, had an extraordinary effect upon 
her. The reputation of that very remarkable 
woman gave great weight to the solemnities she 
wrote, and Frank fell under her spell, and was 
solemn likewise. 

Lucy Stone, " lecturer, agitator, and speech- 
maker," came to Evanston in 1859, and 
Catherine Beecher, and she met and talked with 
them both, and was filled with hero-worship. 
Very naturally, therefore, she adopted " ad- 
vanced views," and maintained her right to 
them. 

She was left to speculate very much by her- 
self. With the exception of her mother, none 
of her companions or the older people she met 
were very sympathetic, and she had none of 
the encouragement and public opinion that help 
the young feminist of to-day. She had to work 
her way alone through the priggishness and 
morbidness and bitterness that cling round the 
early days of an unconventional movement, and 
she came in the end to conclusions that were 
definitely her own. They seem obvious now, 
those daring originalities of i860, but at that 

66 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

date they were somewhat startling. She settled 
and arranged them in her mind in an abrupt mis- 
cellaneous fashion. It was woman's duty to 
understand housekeeping in all its branches, she 
felt, and politics in all its bearings ; she must 
be free to do whatever she could, and she must 
certainly vote. 

Housekeeping " in all its branches " she felt 
to be hopelessly among the things she could 
not do, but politics she loved ; and, indeed, it 
was a stirring time in which to care for them. 
The presidential election of i860 was to be of 
overwhelming importance : the " house divided 
against itself " could not stand much longer. 
The " irrepressible conflict " was drawing near, 
and the interest of the situation was absorbing. 
In Evanston these things seemed less real and 
dreadful than in other parts of the country. 
War, if it came, would be far away ; there were 
no slave -owners there, no negro question, no 
difference of opinion even. They were all anti- 
slavery partisans and Republicans ; but even 
there the excitement was intense. It reached 
its height when in May the Republican Nominat- 
ing Convention met in Chicago. Frances, of 
course, wanted to attend this, but did not do 
so "as father has given us such a lugubrious 

67 



Frances Willard 

picture of the attendant difficulties." The next 
day, however, she regretted it. 

"May 21. i860. — Yesterday the Republican Convention 
at Chicago nominated A. Lincoln for President of the 
United States. I wish I had been in the Wigwam when 
this was done. The accounts Father and Oliver gave us 
of the excitement, the cheers, the handshakings, and the 
handkerchief wavings etc. have made me very enthusiastic. 
They say we must have laughed or cried if we had been 
there." 






But, during these first years out of school 
Frank's energies were not confined to religious 
matters, nor to politics, nor even to the absorb- 
ing woman question. She was very anxious to 
go on with her education, to become " cultured " 
and well-informed ; and she was very busy, too, 
having a good time. There were naturally a 
great many young people in Evanston, and 
Frank and Mary and Oliver seem to have gone 
to many evening parties and excursions and 
" frolics." It is true that Frank still railed 
against the " usages of the present day," and 
thought small talk beneath contempt. It 
is reported that, " At some grammar party or 
sociable she was heard to begin a conversation 
with the very nonchalant remark, ' We all seem 

to be in good health, the company is pleasant, 

68 



Education and the Search for "Culture 



?? 



and the evening a fine one. These subjects 
being duly disposed of, what shall we talk 
about ?'" And she probably followed this by a 
plunge into some unusually interesting discussion . 
All the same she must have enjoyed many 
of the charades and parlour games she pro- 
fessed to despise, and delighted in the serenad- 
ing and riding and rowing and candy-making 
she thought so " profitless." She took part, too, 
in many of the University functions, attending 
their debates and " literary exercises," as well 
as their lectures and prayer-meetings. And then 
she was devoted to many of her friends, and in 
particular to Mary Bannister, daughter of the 
Professor of Theology. With her she would go 
for long walks to discuss their souls' welfare 
or their views on poetry, and she would sit for 
hours, listening to Mary's music. She founded, 
too, a secret literary society called the I.O., 
whose mysteries were recorded in her journal in 
a very transparent cypher, and whose delibera- 
tions and debates dealt with such important 
questions as dreams and tears and tempers. 
Its avowed object was to excite the curiosity of 
the boys, and it imposed heavy fines for letting 
out secrets and voting both ways ! 

Frank's Journals for these years are very 

69 



Frances Willard 

voluminous. They tell of an honest striving to 
be good, of a sensitive conscience, and a serious- 
ness that felt bound to call all fun a waste of 
time. Seriousness of this kind is more often 
found in journals than in reality, but still it 
is certain that she did get through a great 
deal of solid reading of a miscellaneous kind. 
She read Wordsworth, puzzled over animal mag- 
netism, was bewildered by Carlyle, and fascinated 
by phrenology ; she was exhausted by, Adam 
Smith, and wept over Dickens and George 
Eliot. She studied botany and all the science 
she could, wrote articles on general information 
for the Prairie Farmer, planned novels and com- 
posed essays, and with her housework and her 
prayers and her friends, she was busy from 
morning till night. 

The following quotations from her Journals 
of i860 give a picture of the life of moral 
effort that she led— and a picture, too, of the 
intellectual crudeness of her surroundings. The 
book begins with an ambitious scheme of the 
extracts, instruction, and edification, with which 
she would fill the blank pages. Immediately 
after, there follows in Mary's handwriting :— 

" Perhaps it may be obtrusive for me to insinuate any 
of my penmanship . . . but I will ask the owner of this 

70 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

Book if she remembers how lazy she used to be when 
we lived at Forest Home, how she used to run behind 
the door or out of the house so that Father on going 
to town would not leave orders for her to help wash the 
dishes ? If she does not, I would like to have her recall 
the happy memory, for I remember that she would rather 
roost on a hay-stack all day than get a stitch in anything. 
But perhaps I've said enough, perhaps she's better now." 

" One who Knows." 

She certainly was " better now," for there 
follows a " List of subjects on which I wish to 
inform myself " :— 

" Origin of Language. 
Bible Evidences. 
Schools of Philosophy. 
Conchology. 
Political Economy. 
History of Literature. 
Rhetoric (more extensively). 
Mental Philosophy. 
Mineralogy. 
History (in general). 
The Constellations. 
Chronology, Architecture, Painting, etc." 

And also a very strenuous " day's pro- 
gramme " :— 

" Rise at 5 a. m. Write until breakfast. After usual 
morning duties write until dinner. In p. m. sew, make 
calls and read. In evening always read the Bible, after 
which or besides which read or write at pleasure." 

7i 



Frances Willard 

But in spite of this she often notes that, " in 
all this day I cannot see where I have done any 
good," and laments over the " worthless days 
of my life." ; 

" I have spent almost every evening this week, and a 
part of every day away from home ... it is not wise, 
though it has been a pleasant use of time. 

" Mary attended sewing society. I did not. As near 
as I can find out she went simply because she wished to 
do so. If I know my own heart, I stayed at home for 
precisely the same reason ! " 

" It is evening. Father and Mother are in the 
sitting-room, talking with Dr. B. . . . Oliver is out calling. 
Mary is over at the college. I am sitting in our little 
room alone with myself. I am somewhat sad. . . . And 
I'm not sentimental or foolish either." 

" Here's a recipe for the abolishment of the Blues which 
is worth a dozen medical nostrums : — 

Take one spoonful of Pleasant Memories. 

„ two spoonfuls of Endeavours for the Happiness 

of others 
„ „ „ of Forgetfulness of Sorrows 

Mix well with half a pint of Cheerfulness 
Take a portion every hour of the day." 

" Mem. — I must study Mental Philosophy after I leave 
school. It was rather deep, and I had to keep up a 
terrible thinking to get any benefit, but think I succeeded 
partially." 

72 



Education and the Search for " Culture" 

11 Spent last evening at B. S's. Talked small talk, so 
small indeed that a constant mental adjustment, similar 
to that of a microscope, took place, I thought, in almost 
every mind ; and such a magnifying process occurred that 
it was positively distressing." 

" Here is a remark of Mrs. X. which seems to me 
worth remembering for the comfort and encouragement it 
contains : ' There comes a time in the history of every 
student when his acquirements ripen into culture.' " 

" It is a great blessing to have a select, high-minded 
and cultivated class of correspondents. I will have these 
or none ... I have made the resolve : I will never again 
ask an indifferent person to write to me, and will never 
write to one — as a correspondent — from whose letters I 
can derive neither improvement nor ideas." 

" Made this day a resolve that concerning books, 
pictures, scenery, manners, society, etc., I will always 
(when it seems to me the proper time and place) express 
my own honest and candid opinion, and never say I 
like this or that, or think it ' sweet-pretty ' or * heavenly ' 
or ' bewitching ' merely because it is fashionable to think 
so. 

" Resolve when I am angry to be silent." 

On February 14, i860, Mary again wrote in 
the Journal the following graphic description of 
an evening call :— 

" Behold two female parties seated in their own apart- 
ment in frightful dishabille. Again list to the creaking 
wires of the broken bell. List to the tramp of female 

73 



Frances Willard 

parties' brother going to open the door. List to the 
voices from without, ' Are the young ladies in ? ' List 
to the answer, ' Yes they are, both of them.' Again 
peep into the apartment. One damsel reclines languidly 
and sighs deeply, while the other in consternation 
nervously writes the above. Soon Brother comes up, 
* Gentlemen wish to see you. Go down amicably. I 
told them you were both at home, and would be glad 
to see them.' Party No I draws another sigh and says, 
1 Mary go down : as for me, you know I shall retire 
very soon.' Party No. 2 rises nervously, combs her hair 
carefully all the time exclaiming ' I shan't go down one 
step.' Five minutes afterwards behold No i and 2 slowly 
descending the stairs ! " 

Frank's bad handwriting continues : — 

" Called at College yesterday. Professor Jones rallied 
me upon my miserable penmanship, and ended by 
giving me a Writing Book. I know I am not a fine 
writer . . . and somehow it doesn't trouble me." 

" Have resolved that neither public opinion nor 
prejudice, narrow-minded pride ' nor any other creature,' 
shall prevent me from showing wherever I can kindness 
as delicate, and respect as genuine as possible to those 
whom the community as a rule treats slightingly or 
with positive meanness." 

" I observed long ago that no class of human creatures 
get so little sympathy as those who carry in their 
life-luggage a bundle of nerves." 

" This is one of the mild clear days in which we 
live. ... I doubt not that statistics (mem : to ask Oliver) 

74 



Education and the Search for "Culture" 

would show that the majority of murders, robberies, etc., 
have been committed on the days that are " dark and 
dreary." 

" I have attended Dr. F.'s lecture in the University 
chapel, listened to Professor Godman's discourse in the 
church, taken charge of a class in the Sabbath School 
and heard Professor Bartlett's afternoon sermon. I have 
seen presented enough of Christian worth to save all 
the world to all eternity, if it were but acted out in 
deeds." 

" Mr. B., one of the kindest and most brotherly men 
imaginable out of the pulpit, but exceedingly prosy and 
uninteresting in it, preached. I have a wrong and 
unworthy habit of thinking my own thoughts whenever 
this gentleman preaches. When he commenced I thought 
to myself what a long time we shall have to sit here, I 
wouldn't sit still at home for so long for anything. And 
I looked all the people over and wondered what they 
were thinking of and I tried to imagine what it might 
be. I commenced with Mrs. B. and thought first in 
what good taste her bonnet was, and decided that 
probably she was thinking of her mother who was dead. 
I thought Ella B. was wishing she hadn't come to church, 
and I looked at Mary B. and thought what beautiful 
eyes she had, and how intelligent she was. I thought 
how sorry I was for little Dwight that he had no father 
nor mother, and I noticed that he looked bright and 
happy, and I was glad that God lets us forget. I looked 
at Miss Alex, and wondered what made her an old 
maid, and I thought she had had a hard life, doubtless, 
and I wondered if it was labour and lifting that had 

75 



Frances Willard 

made her poor shoulders so round. Then I thought 
how many there were in the church with whom I had 
no sympathy, and for whom I did not care any more 
than if they didn't exist — and who didn't care for me. 
Yet in how many things were we all alike ! How still 
every one was, and how quietly they sat, and how many 
thoughts were in all those silent hearts. . . . And I 
remembered that God knew every heart better than 
any one knew itself. ... I seem to feel the uselessness 
of trying to keep anything back from Him. . . . And 
so I went off deeper and deeper in my thoughts till I 
forgot Mr. B. and his sermon, and where I was for 
awhile, and came back to myself to discover that I was 
looking very hard at my two hands as they were clasped 
on the top of the Psalm Book. Pshaw, I'm tired of 
this." 

" The Sabbath is past, and I fear I'm little better for 
its sacred hours. For very easily these things go out 
of my mind." 

" Mrs. N. and the Miss W. called (Mem. She threw 
off her glove and displayed a diamond ring and four 
lesser lights on the one finger ! poor child ! ) . . . Well, 
I'm sorry, I thought to like her and I can't. . . . What 
did she think of me? Nothing flattering I'm certain. 
But my ugliness and stiffness and dullness don't help 
her. . . . Mrs. N. postulates too much." 

"May 14. i860. — Times are very hard in the West 
this Spring. Father says they're like those of the great 
crisis of '36. What makes me say this is to introduce 
a ridiculous remark of Father's when he put on a new 

76 



Education and the Search for " Culture" 

hat yesterday with his old and rather hard-looking suit 
of clothes ; ' My hat reminds me of a man that went 
and put up some gates around on his farm and hadn't 
a stick of fence on it ! ' " 

" Mother said, ' I'd rather be an Indian and tie my 
blanket with yellow strings than be subject to the 
British !'" 

" Saw picture of A. Lincoln. If he is truly as ugly 
as that he isn't fit for President ! " 

" Resolved. If I ever have any money (which seemeth 
doubtful) to take the following papers and magazines 
that I may be intelligent with regard to current events 
in all important departments : — 

For General News ... N. Y. Tribune, 

„ Local do. . . . Chicago Press & Tribune. 

„ General Religious In- 

„ telligence ... ... N. Y. Independent. 

„ Denominational do. ... N. W. Xian Advocate. 

„ Popular Information 

„ and Literature . . . Harper's Magazine. 

„ Select Literature ... The Atlantic Magazine. 

„ the Reason that I 

„ choose to do so ... Home Journal. 

" I thought that, next to a wish I had to be a saint 
some day, I really would like to be a politician." 



11 



CHAPTER III 
INDEPENDENCE 

It is a strange thing that in spite of the happi- 
ness of the girls who lived in Evanston, in 
spite of their friendships for each other, their 
interest in the young biblical students, and their 
serious efforts after self-improvement, a great 
many of them went away to teach. They did 
not need to go : their fathers were rich enough 
to support them, their mothers were eager to 
have them at home, and yet they felt a call. 
Teaching was hard and tedious, and they all 
knew it ; the life they would have to lead was 
lonely, " boarding round " was likely to be 
uncomfortable, and the children were sure to be 
unruly ; and yet for this they gave up their 
homes and their friends and their studies. 

It was, perhaps, partly because they wanted 
to own money that they went out to teach. 
Most men at that time believed in " the one 
purse theory for families," and kept that one 

78 



Independence 

purse safely in their own pockets. Mr. Willard, 
in particular, even went so far as to choose his 
daughters' clothes for them, sometimes greatly 
to their annoyance. And the humiliation of 
having to ask for money, even if it were quite 
freely given, weighed on these girls a good deal. 
There were many things they wanted to do with 
money— papers to take in, photographs to give 
to their friends, or charities to subscribe to, all 
of which their fathers would not have grudged 
them ; and yet they went without them sooner 
than face the ordeal of asking. 

Perhaps it was also partly a spirit of adventure 
that drove them out. Life was so full of possi- 
bilities, and Evanston was so familiar I Teach- 
ing was dull, of course, but it was all they 
could do, for, as Frank said, " not to be at all 
or else to be a teacher," were their only alter- 
natives. Life at home doing nothing, earning 
nothing, seemed to cause them not to be at all, 
and so teachers they had to become. But it 
was not only a spirit of adventure, nor a desire 
for money ; there was also a much more serious 
purpose in their hearts, a purpose to be of use 
in the world, to count for something. It seemed 
to them wonderful to earn money, and to be "a 
worker." To their brothers it was a matter of 

79 



Frances Willard 

course, but to them it had . all the importance 
of a mission. For one thing, the decision was 
in their own hands ; they were not expected to 
work, and everything was conspiring against 
them. They could not get good wages, they 
would have to fight public opinion and their own 
laziness, and do it all without encouragement or 
incentive or prospect of success. But, of course, 
these difficulties only added strength to their 
purpose, till it began to seem an imperative duty, 
and a self-sacrifice supremely desirable. 

Frances was the first of these girls to set out. 
She had stayed at home for a year after leaving 
college, but all through the year she was grow- 
ing restless. 

" I am twenty years old and I have neither dignity 
nor womanliness. I am giddy and thoughtless — as much 
so as I ever was. ... I am not reliable, and self-contained. 
. . . Now I'm sorry that I'm not more like my idea 
young lady and I'm anxious to be more like her if I 
can. But I must get my discipline in a rougher school 
than most young ladies do. I see clearly that I shall 
never be the grown-up person that I ought to be until 
I have borne and laboured and had patience. And if 
I become a teacher in some school that I don't like, 
and if I go away alone and try what I myself can do, 
and suffer, and am tired and lonely . . . and if everything 
is hard for me ... I think I may grow to be strong and 

80 



Independence 



earnest in practice. ... So I hope to get the school 
Mr. E. wrote to me about, for it will be hard and I need 
hard things if I'm ever to be a ' fine character.' And I 
wish it more than any one thinks I do." 

" May 22. — Letter from Mr. E. saying that he thought 
he had secured me a school. It is very kind of him, 
for I ought to be earning money for myself and doing 
something as every one else is. Of course it will be very 
hard for me ; for I'm not used to care or trouble. Evanston 
is a beautiful place to live in and those I love best are 
here : but I would rather go, notwithstanding. . , . I hope 
to obtain the situation, for I have not yet been out in 
the world to do and dare for myself, single-handed and 
alone, and I should like to try my powers. For I've 
remained here in the nest a full-grown bird long enough 
and too long. It is an anomaly in Natural History ! 

-When it was all settled she told her father 
that she had accepted a post as teacher of the 
district school at Harlan, a village about twenty 
miles away. He was very unhappy about it, for 
he wanted to " protect " his daughters ; but it 
was arranged, and he would not actually forbid 
her to go. In fact, he took her there so as to 
protect her up to the last minute. 

Frances was miserable at going. Her friends 
wrote melancholy notes to her, and came to 
serenade her, but they did not try to make her 
stay. They knew she was right, and they 
admired her strength of purpose. 



Frances Willard 

The only training for her teaching that she 
had was a short visit to two of the Evanston 
schools, and the experience she had had one 
summer vacation at Forest Home, when she took 
charge of the schoolhouse, more in play than 
earnest. With this slight equipment she set 
forth on her career. Her Journal tells the story 
of the misery of her first few days, and of how 
she soon made friends, of how she grew inter- 
ested in teaching and sometimes forgot to be 
homesick, and of how she came home after 
thirteen weeks' experience feeling older and 
wiser and of far more value in the world :— 

"Harlan. Cook Co., III. June 5, i860. — After leaving 
home, walking from Harlan station to my ugly red school- 
house through a marsh, riding through the flying mud 
with some kindhearted ladies to my boarding place, and 
meeting the iciest of receptions'; taking dinner and walking 
more than half a mile back to my den (for it is nothing 
else than the most comfortless house I have ever seen) : 
going through the tiresome routine teaching ABC, spell- 
ing and the like, helping sweep the school-house (which 
is dirty beyond description, with broken windows, baked 
floor, and cobwebs mingled), walking home again, unpack- 
ing and arranging my effects, arranging ' Order of 
Exercises ' for my school, — after ail this I sat down, very 
tired and full of heartache, and the tears came into my 
eyes. . . . 

" Home is so pleasant and they are kind to me and 

82 



Independence 



I have friends. . . . I'm not very strong, cold words 
and heartless looks jar me very painfully. 

" Father walked over to the school-house to bring me 
a bundle and to say goodbye last night before he went 
away. I turned away, saying in answer to his half-cheery 
half-sad words (for I knew he was sorry for me), ' Good- 
bye, Father, I'm not afraid.' But the tears blinded me 
so that I could hardly see to go back to the teacher's 
desk again. And yet they don't know. The rough school 
directors don't dream that I'm not exactly in ecstasies 
even though I'm teaching in their 'deestrict.' And 
they'll not know either ! I turn to God with new eagerness. 
. . . Just now I took my Bible and opened it at the 
passage ' Like as a father pitieth his children, so the 
Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' 

" Yes, it is hard, and I knew it would be. But I can 
bear it and I will. The inside and the outside life are 
vastly different : one is quiet and firm, the other full 
of longing and misery. Of this last I shall not write even 
in my letters home, for it would do no good and it would 
worry Mother. 

" School life is almost unendurable. I have twenty- 
seven scholars, 5 A B C darians, the rest all under twelve 
years old, except two girls and one boy. The school- 
house leaks, is small, dirty and meanly constructed. The 
children are more than half German, the rest Irish and 
uncultivated (Oh how emphatically so !) Americans. I 
have a class in Botany, U.S. History, Algebra, Arithmetic 
and Grammar. It is very cold and I have no materials 
for making a fire. The house leaks and my desk is wet 
and I am completely chilled. In three hours I must walk 
home through the mud that will come over my shoe tops." 

83 



Frances Willard 

This extremely dismal state of mind soon 
passed away. In the first place Frances made 
great friends with Clara Thatcher, the daughter 
of the people with whom she boarded. Before 
they had known each other two days they had 
" already planned to pursue together the follow- 
ing studies " : Drawing from copies ; sketching 
from Nature ; constellations ; botany and 
herbarium-making ; entomology ; conchology ; 
aquarium -making and the Manual alphabet ! 

With this energetic prospect before her Frank 
was able to write :— 

"June 7. — I am quite contented this morning, and dis- 
posed to look with some complacency on my lot in life. 
My school will be thoroughly organised before the close 
of the week. 

" Asked two of my pupils why we have such a day as 
Xmas. They said, ' It comes some time in the Fall 
and we have it so that we can hang up our stockings 
and get something nice.' " 

This lamentable ignorance roused Frank to 
open a Sunday School, and thus to deprive her- 
self of her only day of rest. She gradually 
became more and more interested in her teach- 
ing, and was evidently very successful. The 

numbers in the school rose from twenty-seven 

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to forty-five, and the behaviour gradually became 
exemplary. 

" My pupils have not been as studious or as easily 
governed as usual to-day, and they have troubled me 
exceedingly. I've been obliged to box the ears of two 
little reprobates, apply the ferule to the brown palms 
of four more, and lay violent hands on another to coerce 
him into a measure that did not exactly meet his views. 
... I would never speak a harsh word to them only 
as they force me to do so by the total depravity mani- 
fested in their conduct. 

" Went walking with Clara this evening to sketch and 
collect beetles. Took a sketch on the banks of the Oplani 
River, pulled a log to pieces and bottled a lot of Coleop- 
tarians, talked and laughed and had a pleasant time. 
Analysed what finally proved to be an Ox Eye Daisy, 
and made it come out a Prickly pear ! I haven't 
laughed so heartily in months as over this scientific 
result." 

"June 13. — Just now some Winnebago Indians went 
by and created a great excitement among my little flock. 
The chief and the rest of the men walked erect and 
unburdened. The women staggered along under great 
packages laid on their shoulders. This relic of barbarism 
set me thinking about the blessings of our civilisation and 
the thankfulness that should fill every woman s breast for 
the Christianity that has wrought the change." 

"June 15. — Got on with less thwacking than usual 
this morning. They seem so small to me that I don't 
like to hurt them. Two of the directors called a moment, 
looked savagely around, and telling me to thresh 'em 

8S 



Frances Willard 

within an inch of their lives if they didn't behave them- 
selves,' took their departure. I wish they wouldn't call 
so often." 

These directors, indeed, were rather a trial 
to her. They would come to see how she was 
getting on, picturesque old farmers with their 
red shirts and their blue overalls and slouch 
hats, and stand about and tell her what to do., 
But she defied them more than once. " The 
obeying days are passed with me," she said, 
and she would teach in her own way. 

The whole curriculum was in her hands, and, 
except for the directors, she could do as she 
liked. She drew up eight amusing rules for 
conducting a country school, which show that 
she had a natural gift for teaching :— 

" I. Never let your pupils understand you or know 
what to expect from you. 

" 2. Demand implicit obedience. Never yield a point. 

" 3. Introduce general exercise when practicable (mem. 
gymnastic exercises, singing, pointing to places on atlas, 
and reciting in concert, parts of flowers, bones of body 
and as many other awful things as you can think of). 

" 4. Be prompt. 

" 5. Give general information on important subjects. 

"6. Let the little ones go out and play a good deal 
during study hours. 

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Independence 

" 7. Have everything systematised to fullest extent. 
" 8. Wink at whispering unless it becomes too palpable. 

" During school-hours [I] forget home and friends and 
everything else in my desire of instructing my pupils 
well and worthily. 

" Several thwacking interludes, and four refractory 
rebels kept after school. I didn't like to punish them, 
foolish little things, and so I told them. 

" I might go home any Saturday I chose ; it is only 
nineteen miles — but I will not, though I wish so much 
to do so, for it is better for me to learn self-denial. 

" I never felt so firmly as I do now how vast and 
wonderful is God. 

" I had a long kind letter from father. He requested 
me not to write letters on the Sabbath. Therefore, 
though I think it is not wrong to write a friendly 
Christianly letter, with words in it I should talk if it 
were possible — I will hereafter, out of respect for his 
wishes simply, cease to do so. 

" Sat in the twilight and sang myself into happiness. 

" After all, though I think and write so much of home 
and friends, how much better it is to be going to my 
work this morning with the rest of the busy striving world 
than to be at home idling about, reading some, writing 
a little, walking with the girls and devising ways and 
means of killing time and yawning and fretting at my 
own idleness. I'm very glad I'm here learning patience 
and bravery and self-reliance, and earning more than 
a dollar a day. 

" I wish my heart was pure and loving toward God. But 
alas, when I pray the heavens seem brass above me. . . . 

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Frances Willard 

" Got up at four and read the papers before breakfast. 
There is a certain freshness and charm about a newspaper 
if it is not over a few hours old. 

" When the census-taker wrote ' teacher ' opposite my 
name I stood up a little straighter and thought to myself, 
' You are of the workers now, thank God for it.' " 

On the whole she really enjoyed her work, 
hard though it was. The summer was very hot, 
and sometimes she grew tired and hoarse " with 
talking to so many nuisances " ; she " felt 
weary all the time," and was often so homesick 
that she felt she could not bear it when her 
letters did not come. But her pupils loved her, 
and she taught them well ; and Clara was a 
great comfort, and she was doing what was 
right, and so at night she " read the Bible, 
prayed to God, and went to sleep," and was 
content . 

She took one holiday, when she went home 
to attend the graduation of her sister and her 
great friend, Mary Bannister ; and the joy of 
this, which had set her dancing round the house 
for days before, lasted her on till the other 
glorious day when she shut the schoolroom door 
for the end of term and went home to rest. 

It was not long that she stayed there, how- 
ever. After a few weeks she was off again to 

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teach in another school, and repeat, more or less, 
the experiences she had just passed through. 
Mary Bannister went away also, and Kate 
Kidder, and many of the others, and Mary 
Willard, who was left at home, grieved bitterly 
because she, too, could not go out into the 
" larger life." 

Mary's Journals for these years are very 
charming, and, in a way, more interesting than 
her sister's. They are not so full of facts, reso- 
lutions, and strivings, and they reveal a very 
different character, but they have in them many 
quiet touches of observation. They are more 
thoughtfully written, too, without the impetuous 
haste that was always driving Frank on to new 
things. While Frank was away Mary thought 
of her much, and wrote of her in her Journal. 

"July 7. — It thunders and lightens. I wonder what 
Frank is doing ! She always was afraid in a storm. 
I remember when we lived at Forest Home she used 
to put her head in mother's lap and ask her to sing 
so as to have evidence that she at least was not frightened. 
Oh, those were queer times ! Frank and I never dreamt 
of what was coming— never thought of ourselves as being 
young ladies." 

They were devoted to each other, and it was 

hard on Mary that she should be left behind ; 

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Frances Willard 

but she thought it was right that Frank, at any 
rate, should go, and hoped that perhaps when 
she was stronger and older she might be able 
to follow. 

The second school in which Frank taught had 
the curious name of " Kankakee Academy," 
and there she found herself " preceptress of 
philosophy, history, drawing, grammar, and 
reading.'* 

"Sept. 26, i860. — I have been trying to think why 
I go away to this new work so soon. I can not tell. I 
only know that I have some dim sense that it is right 
and best. Certainly it is not the happiest. 

" I have not done much in these years, yet God knows 
I will try to make up if He will spare me, and somehow 
I believe He will." 

" Oct. 2. What a world this is to be sure, and how we 
struggle about in it, straying off from those whom we love 
and those who love us to strange unfriendly regions. . . . 
Father left me yesterday evening, and I prayed quite 
trustfully and went to sleep with a broad grin on my 
face, put on through sheer strength of will. I am going 
to try not to cry once while I am here, for I am 21. 
It is not so very bad, and I won't care. I wish I were 
a better woman. Burke says that the traits most admired 
in women are dependence, softness, timidity, and I am 
quite deficient in them all." 

When Frank was away from home her 

mother wrote her many sedate and comforting 

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letters, from which the following is a typical 
extract : — 

" It gives me pleasure to learn that you are not lonely 
or unhappy. ... I am thankful you have calmness, and 
quiet endurance, and something that you can almost call 
peace. Your excitement you must now seek in the 
vitalising influences of the Holy Spirit." 

It did not need her mother's encouragement, 
however, to turn her mind to religion. Kankakee 
appears to have been a village of " non -pro- 
fessors," who yet were so good and pious that 
Frank felt she could not say, " Surely we are 
the people," with half the emphasis she once 
put on the words. They said their prayers, 
" though not bred to orthodoxy," and they con- 
tributed to the support of the Church, though 
" making no profession of Christianity," and 
Frank felt that this taught her an important 
lesson in " charity and faith in mankind." She 
began to think, " that I regard all the Churches, 
the branches rather of one Church, with feel- 
ings of equal kindness and fellowship. For 
myself, under existing circumstances, I prefer 
the one to which I belong, but that a person 
belonged to that Church and was a true 
Christian, would be to me no more of a recom- 

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Frances Willard 

mendation than that he was a true Christian and 
belonged to any other." This was her attitude 
all her life long. She never ceased to be a 
Methodist, " because I have been reared in it," 
but her interpretations of doctrine were very 
liberal. The interest in religion that her Evan- 
ston training had given her she never lost, but 
she was never troubled over doctrine. It seemed 
to her that it was unimportant, and that holi- 
ness and spiritual life were the real things. She 
sat at the feet of every teacher of holiness she 
ever met, learning from Buddhist, Quaker, or 
Catholic alike, and her belief in goodness and 
in God was her inner life, and came to be the 
whole meaning of existence to her. 

At Kankakee she stayed only three months. 
Mary was not well, and her father persuaded her 
to come home at Christmas. Then for six 
months she went back to the pleasant life of a 
young lady, and studied German and worked 
again to improve her mind, and enjoyed herself 
very greatly, even though she was still tormented 
by a feeling of uselessness. 

"Feb. 26, 1 86 1. — I thought to-night as twilight settled 
over us in the sitting-room downstairs how sad and 
significant a thing is this common life we live so care- 
lessly. Father sat by the fire, resting after his work. 

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Mother was near him. At the piano Mary was playing 
a low musing sort of melody. The firelight flashed 
up now and then. I sat on the lounge with my hand 
under my chin and gazed over everything. Thus in 
a thousand homes I thought of fathers and mothers with 
their children." 

" March 4, Lincoln's Inauguration Day. — I wonder why 
God lets me live? I'm of no earthly use. Nothing 
would go differently without me, unless . . . the front 
stairs might not be swept so often. . . . But come, let 
us reason together, what more could I do if I would ? . . . 
Nobody seems to need me. In my present position there 
is nothing that I might do and don't do except to sew 
a little and make cake ! . . . But perhaps I may be 
needed some day and am only waiting for the crisis. 
We are told that God in His wisdom makes nothing 
in vain. 

" Below stairs Dr. B. and father are talking of secession, 
Lincoln, the Cabinet, and the prospect of Civil War. 
The opinion generally expressed is that a collision is 
unavoidable and must occur within a very few days. 
God pity us and forgive the accumulations of crimes 
and follies that have brought so near us a result so 
terrible." 

" I tried to make my toilet with unusual care, thereby 
succeeding in looking as homely as sin. 

" I wonder why I live and what I'm coming to — and 
what I shall have done before I die? 

" Somehow I think there are possibilities in me that I 
do not enough regard. I really think I might be and 
do more than I ever have as yet. I feel it sometimes — 
this rising up of powers that I don't use as I might. 

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Frances Willard 

God forgive me if it's wrong or conceited to say so, 
It seems to me . . . that my best self does exist, 
that it might do, that this poor unworthy life is not all. 
That I might do something higher and better — aye ! 
and that I will. 

" Concerning Bro. B.'s sermon I may be permitted to 
say that I survived it. 

" A hungry soul and a bruised heart are objects more 
pitiable, more full of agony, I think, than a maimed 
limb or abject penury. I wish my mission might be 
to those who make no sign yet suffer all the more 
intensely under their cold unimploring faces. The 
agony of a sensitive nature feeling that it does not 
adequately represent itself . . . that its efforts to rise 
are viewed with carelessness by the most generous 
in the community: that it is denied companionship 
with those whose society it craves and feels that it 
deserves — no words may measure this. These people 
whose souls sit on the ends of their nerves ... to whom 
a cold look or slighting word is like frost to the flowers — 
God pity them. 

" I think the Willards are made polite by reason of their 
own extreme sensitiveness. 

" Nothing is a light matter that makes my heart ache. 
Nothing is indifferent that gives [me] pain . . . though 
I have as good an opinion of myself as the facts will at all 
warrant, yet a sting is a sting to me be I weak or strong, 
and I will avoid it as long as I have the power. And I 
will speak more kindly and considerately to those whose 
claims are unrecognised by the society in which I live 
than I will to any others." 

"April 13. — Father brought startling intelligence. 

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The war has actually begun. Fort Sumpter is attacked by 
those villainous Charlestonians. ... I feel strange and sad 
to think how they are fighting down there to-night. But 
God works in these things, and if this Curse that Slavery 
entails upon us can be removed, every true and patriotic 
heart must say 'Let it be done.'" 

The outbreak of war caused the wildest excite- 
ment up and down the country. The Churches 
of the North and South thundered against each 
other, and both " called down God's wrath upon 
the enemy." " There is but one voice all over 
the North/' wrote F., "arid that is, ' Here am I, 
send me.' " All the girls began to make flags 
and bandages, and dreamt of nursing the 
soldiers. The students in the University enlisted 
—Oliver Willard among them ; but they were 
not called to the front. For a time the whole 
village rang with war ; the first Sunday trains 
that Frank had ever known rushed through 
Evanston taking the troops from Minnesota to 
Washington, and some of their friends and 
acquaintances were among those who went, 
never to come back. 

" April 21, '61.— On this beautiful Sabbath Day the 
unusual sound of the whistle and thundering cars has 
been heard for the first time, and our thoughts have been 
more of war, I fear, than of the God of battles whom we 

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Frances Willard 

tried to worship. It is twilight and soon I shall go 
peacefully to sleep, but while I am asleep iooo soldiers 
will pass through our quiet village on their way to 
" the war," that terrible Something which hangs over us 
black and portentous. Somewhere in Wisconsin, and on 
the broad bright plains of Minnesota, mothers, sisters, 
daughters and wives, will be weeping and praying to-night 
for the soldiers. God pity them and give them peace." 

But no one believed that the war could last 

long : and in any case it was far away, and 

Evanston soon settled back into its usual round 

of self -improvement and religion. Now and 

then there came to Chicago patriotic speakers, 

urging the men to enlist and keeping alight the 

patriotism of the North. One of these, Anna 

Dickinson, Frank went to hear. She was a 

great orator, the second woman Frank had ever 

heard, and she made a profound impression upon 

her mind. Anna Dickinson was only a young 

girl, barely twenty, with short curling black hair 

and the most wonderful voice. She seemed 

almost inspired when she spoke, and roused her 

audiences to the wildest pitch of excitement. 

She went her way over the country, one of the 

most remarkable figures of the war, urging, 

exhorting, and rousing the North to care for 

Union and fight for liberty. Years afterwards 

Frances tried to induce her to speak for the 

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temperance cause. They became friends, and 
for a time Frances hoped to persuade her to 
use her great gifts and her immense popularity 
for this new war against intemperance ; but her 
restless ambition and queer morbid nature carried 
her away to other work, and in the end to 
failure . 

Except for excitements such as her coming, 
however, the war seemed to make little difference 
in Evanston. The young men wrote their first 
sermons, and read them to their admiring 
friends ; the reading circles met and discussed 
free-will and the doctrine of special providences, 
and things went on as before. Frances and 
Mary Bannister talked to each other of their 
spiritual states, and of their ambitions ; and 
about this time they also began to confide very 
important secrets, for they were both falling in 
love. 

Oliver Willard had many friends among the 
young students, and his sisters saw a good deal 
of them ; sometimes they saw too much, as 
when Frank wrote :— 

"April '61 — We talked sense till my eyes shut them- 
selves involuntarily. . . . They stayed too long : I wonder 
if gentlemen know how torturing this is to the female 
heart ! (How Mary and I hate that word next to the last!)" 

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Frances Willard 

But they did not always stay too long, nor 
did they always talk sense—and Frances and 
Mary were great friends with many of them. 
Oliver's chief friend at that time was Charles H. 
Fowler, a young man of great promise, rather 
stern in his views, rather pompous in his ways, 
and with a great opinion of his own worth. 
Frances began to like him. She found she 
could talk quite freely to him and not be 
misunderstood. She admired him unreservedly. 

"He talks so well, 'like a book' literally. There is no 
hesitation, no repetition. Indeed his mind seems to me 
so well sorted out : like a store where the shelves are all in 
order and everything is labelled and arranged. 

" With Fowler I never think what I shall say next, nor 
how I shall get on trying to entertain him. The only 
trouble is a slight incoherence owing to the fact that I 
have so much to say." 

Then he began to confide in her. He told 
her why he did not enlist with the others, and 
of his past history, and his great ambitions, until 
gradually she found that she was failing in love 
with him. She took it simply and naturally, 
and wrote of it very truthfully in her Journal, 
rather wondering at her own sensations. 

" April 29. — I wonder if I ought ? It seems rather hypo- 
critical to keep a journal and not write in it one's self and 
one's entire self, as far as it is known. 

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" I have never done this, until now. If I told nothing 
that savoured of romance, or secret sighing, or a ' heart- 
affair,' it was because I had none of these things to tell. 
I never permitted them in myself. I believe we may be 
creatures of will in these matters, and I have been 
one. 

" Beyond the whim of the hour ... I have had no 
experiences. And very heartily I thank God for this, 
that my heart has been free and quiet all these 
years. . . . 

" I am not sentimental — could never pine away on 
account of blasted hopes and unrequited affections or 
broken vows. (I am not sneering now, nor ever shall, I 
hope, at those who are so constituted that they cannot help 
doing these things.) I have never known anything of 
Love — the kind, I mean, they tell about in stories — 
until 

" There's a robin singing on a tree top yonder. The 
music is very sweet, jubilant and beautiful. Somehow 
there is a song in my heart just like the robin's, only more 
soft and full of melody. It was never there until — O, a 
very little while ago. I've heard Father tell how the brooks 
come down the mountains in New England ; out of dark 
silent places among evergreens and moss and shadow 
they steal forth, and gurgle with such a pleasant murmur 
down the steep hillsides. Sometimes they make rivers, 
I suppose, and sometimes not. Well, I keep on hearing 
such a musical sound all the time, and I guess that's in 
my heart too. It's rather strange, I know, and not like me, 
but I've read of "the Fountain very far down" in some 
people's natures — perhaps it has been reached in mine ! 

" I think so often nowadays of the beautiful buds of 

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Frances Willard 

white roses. Do they always change to roses, I wonder ? 
It may be foolish, but I can't help hoping that they 
do. . . . The song . . . makes everything beautiful, more 
than it used to be. . . . It is no matter about particulars : 
suffice it that I am in some way different, that I wonder 
and laugh and am surprised at myself. That my boasted 
pride has fled away from me, and yet I'm not ashamed. 
That I am glad and thankful, and finally that for the first 
time in your life, you stony-hearted personage, who have 
smiled so wisely upon the secrecy with which other girls 
invest their journals, you must hang your head, look 
remarkably foolish, and hide this book between the mattress 
and the feather bed ! O simpleton, I mourn over your 
apostasy. Aren't you ashamed of yourself? No, not in 
the least. Why should I be? 

" The proud don't-care feeling of all my life before is 
gone, and I acknowledge myself conquered. It seems 
strange to give up : strange to care so much for one I don't 
know very well : strange to think so much in such a new 
direction. I doubt my own identity once in a while. 

" I'm very different now. I hardly know myself, and I 
guess that I don't like myself as I did once." 

But if she did not like herself so much, she 

liked some one else more, for she was very 

genuinely in love, and endured all its great 

excitements, its hopes and despairs. At the end 

of May she went back to Harlan to teach 

through the summer again. The thought of it 

had been very dreary, and the " banishment " 

promised at first to be as bad as her fears. But 

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Independence 

she had plenty of courage and common sense, 
and after a day or two she declared that she 
had- 

" found how to cheat Harlan of its quota of miserable days 
and weeks. By constantly employing my time. I permit 
no reveries : I don't think of the old life or the old loves. 
They underlie everything, of course, but they don't — shan't 
outcrop only very very seldom. I read or write or teach 
or eat or sleep or talk all the time. I don't sit still 
thinking a moment. And really I find I can tolerate 
existence very well ! " 

Soon she did not need this sensible plan ; the 
reveries might be encouraged— the old loves 
remembered ; for the existence she could 
tolerate turned into one in which she was 
" almost perfectly happy." She became engaged 
to Charles Fowler on June 2nd, and her Journal 
tells the love story very simply : — 

"June 5. I haven't written since Friday, four whole days. 
In them — how shall I tell it ? There is no way better 
than to begin at the beginning and narrate this as if it 
were not the most blessed beautiful event of all my life ! 

Well . Much to my surprise and delight Mr. Fowler 

and Oliver came by the 9 o'clock train on Saturday 
evening, the former to preach, the latter to visit. The 
Sabbath June 2 was the dearest, holiest day of all the days 
I've lived. Charlie and I talked on the piazza all the 
morning. We exchanged confidences on a subject I have 

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Frances Willard 

thought much about. ... It is one concerning my brother 
and my friend (Mary Bannister). I have such hopes that 
they may love each "other — it would make me almost 
perfectly happy. I should want only one thing more. . . . 
I know now that I have that other thing. . . . We talked 
pleasantly — I remember it, and there is little need to write 
it down, the quiet talk we had. 

" In the afternoon he preached — very finely, it is almost 
superfluous to say. He looked splendidly in the pulpit 
(or rather the desk of the little school-house where I've 
spent many days, very long and very lonely). . . . After 
church and after tea he asked me to go walking. . . . 
Coming back — I don't know how it was — it is all like a 
beautiful dream — he told me that he loved me — that I was 
" the first and last and only one." And with no fear, no 
shrinking, I told him I had always loved him — that it 
seemed so natural to me, as if there was nothing else I 
could do except that. . . . 

" I am happy now. The loneliness don't trouble, the 
school don't weary, the annoyances have lost their power. 
Under them all is the conciousness that he does care. 

" Oliver asked for ' war news ' and offered to exchange 
it I must tell him that Fort Sumpter has surrendered." 

After this Harlan, and all the world, became 
delightful. She had energy for everything, and 
spirits as high as in the days when she ran 
wild on the farm, before she became a young 
lady. She was still teaching six hours a day, 
but she managed besides " to improve in the 

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following departments : bread -making, using 
sewing-machine, horseback riding, German, 
chess, drawing, fishing, driving, shooting. She 
made friends with every one in the place, ate 
strawberries and cream voraciously, and took to 
reading stories of adventure again. But all the 
while she says very little of the love that caused 
this joy, and writes more of fishing and riding 
and her school. At the end of the Journal, how- 
ever, there is a simple bit of thanksgiving for 
her happiness : — 

" I thank Thee for the blessings that have come to me, 
and the rest that has come to my heart since I com- 
menced this book. I thank Thee for him, so noble, good 
and gifted, and for his love, the greatest blessing, the 
holiest benediction, that my life has known. Make me 
better and more worthy." 

To which Fowler added, characteristically, in 
the margin :— 

" God help me to keep that light undimmed, that rest 
undisturbed, that benediction unabated. — C.H.F." 

At the end of June she gave up her school 

and went home, thinking that her teaching days 

were over. But even then she was rather 

uneasy, for Fowler must always have been out 

of sympathy with all her cherished beliefs, 

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Frances Willard 

though, of course, for a time they seemed per- 
fectly agreed. She had shown him all she had 
written in her Journals, and he put here and 
there pious and stilted little comments that show 
how far he was from appreciating their true 
meaning, and that show, too, how he valued 
what she disliked, and disliked what she valued. 

The word " conquered," which she had used 
when she found herself to be in love, seemed 
to please him exceedingly. " First mention in 
this book, Frank, may God bless you," is his 
comment, a calm acceptance of authority that 
must surely have troubled the thoughts that were 
set in the new direction, but were the same 
thoughts still. 

He gave her books tc read that were too 
sternly Calvinistic. 

" Read ' The Baptism of Fire.' It impresses me 
strangely, and, I must add, painfully. ... I have been 
taught that Religion is a happy thing. I thought God 
wanted us to enjoy life. ... I thought He would rather 
we laughed than cried. . . . When Christ forgives me, 
what agony need I be in?" 

Thoughts like these distressed her, and Fowler 
talked of them with too certain a voice, and by 
the following April she was back at work again, 

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her engagement broken and her future in her 
own hands once more. 

It is not difficult to imagine why the engage- 
ment ended, since Frank was too honest to 
cheat herself into hoping for what she knew to 
be impossible, and Fowler too earnest to be 
content with any compromise. But it must 
have been difficult for them both— difficult to 
realise their incompatibility, and still more diffi- 
cult to say so. To Fowler it was probably the 
harder, since he held it to be woman's province 
to adapt herself to man, and he no doubt 
thought Frances was to blame. To her it was 
probably something of a relief ; and yet it was 
hard for her, too, hard to give pain and hard 
to face it. There are no records to show 
exactly how they came to find that their love 
was only friendship and their hopes delusions. 
The Journals for these months are lost, and in 
the Autobiography the whole incident is only 
mentioned as " the climax that I then thought 
would close my independent career." But to 
her friends Miss Willard would often say how 
greatly she had liked and respected, and even 
loved Fowler, " so long as he stayed the other 
side of the room," but how, when he came 
over to her side, she knew that she could not 

105 



Frances Willard 

marry him. This may have been metaphorical 
as well as literal, for when he took up the 
defence of her theories he no doubt put into 
them different and wholly foreign meanings, 
severities and limitations that she did not 
like, and an exclusiveness that she could not 
understand. 

At any rate, by whatever difficult steps, they 
came to an understanding in February, after 
having been engaged for eight months. And in 
April Frank began to teach again, at the Grove 
School in Evanston. 

Mary Bannister also taught at this school. She 
and Oliver had become engaged at about the 
time " that Fort Sumpter surrendered," and this 
engagement was a great delight to Frank and 
to the whole family. Mary Willard's Journal 
gives an amusing picture of Oliver and his 
affairs at this time :— 

"July 24. About twenty years ago in the State of N.Y. 
might have been seen a young mother and her only 
son. . . . Well this small boy lived on, year after year : he 
grew, he cried, and laughed : he rocked the cradle of his 
youngest sister — often impatiently — and I make no doubt 
often dropped her on the floor when he was tired of hold- 
ing her, so that she might cry and be taken care of by his 
mother. He went to school : played marbles : made mud 
pies : studied his lessons with unusual diligence. When 

106 



Independence 



quite a youth he lived upon a farm : he milked cows and 
tended sheep : he made a swing : he swung his sister : 
he hunted, fished, and learned to swim. Later in life he 
went to college : assumed superior airs at vacation time : 
smoked cigars : wore paper collars : carried a slim little 
cane : and quoted Byron. Subsequently he graduated in 
a creditable manner from college : lived at home for a 
few months : grew serious : commenced studying for the 
ministry — FELL IN LOVE. 

" After all that I have said but one more remark shall 
be offered, viz. : My brave and noble brother can no 
longer be depended upon as an escort o'nights by his 
feminine relatives." 

Frances tried to find comfort in her friend's 

happiness, and meanwhile she worked very hard 

at the new school. " Dear knows, I give my 

whole mind to it, to say the least," she wrote 

on April 25th, and its difficulties only helped 

her not to be unhappy. But the next few 

months were in other ways a very miserable 

time for Frances, for Mary Willard fell ill of 

consumption. Every morning Frank went off 

to school, and worked hard and felt that if she 

were not so tired she would thank God every 

moment that she was of use. But Mary, who 

stayed at home, grew more tired still, and 

wondered whether God meant her to be of use, 

too, or always to be an invalid. As the days 

107 



Frances Willard 

went by she grew worse and worse, though they 
tried to hope that she might recover. 

"May 30. '62. — Mary is getting better very slowly — 
it is a painfully familiar sight, her thin face on the pillow, 
when I come in from school. 

" We talked a little, she and I, about old times at home, 
before either of us had other loves than those of the dear 
ones then. She said ' I have never been so happy as 
when we used to " keep store " under the trees and go 
walking with Father and Mother in the orchard and 
pasture. Just think, Frank, of the vine all over the house, 
of the deep well, the evergreens, the pets of all sorts, and 
the dear old barn ! ' She is so anxious to go back, and 
says she shall never get well unless we take her home. 
Just as soon as she can bear it, Mother will go with 
her." 

As she grew weaker she talked more about 
God and goodness. All her life she had been 
one of those people to whom holiness seems 
natural, a gentle, kind, affectionate girl, full of 
quiet fun and quiet piety. And now that she 
came to die she was not afraid ; as she said, 
she was " getting more faith." 

Just before she died she gave Frances her 
message— a message that her sister took and 
carried round the world—" Tell everybody to be 
good." They are earnest words, striking in 

their simplicity ; and Frances, who heard them, 

108 




MARY WILLARD. 



To fa^e paae io8. 



Independence 



never forgot them. For all the rest of her life 
that was her endeavour. She built round them 
a great organisation ; she went to and fro work- 
ing and speaking and planning and deciding, 
and everywhere she went, and in whatever she 
did, this was what she tried to teach ; and she 
did not lay down the work until the day when 
she, in her turn, would never get well unless 
she was taken home. 

Mary died on the 8th of June, 1862, and 
Frances was overwhelmed by the grief of it. 
Almost all their lives they had been together ; 
they had shared their earliest escapades, their 
longings for knowledge, their thoughts, their 
religion, and their friends. And now one of 
them was gone, and the other could hardly 
believe it. 

"June 8, 1862. — Mary is dead. I write the sentence — 
stop and look at it — do not know what it means. For 
God is merciful, and the awful truth of my desolation does 
not shut down close around me all the time. ..." 

The next year she wtas able to write about 
her sister, but for the moment the sorrow was 
too great . They could none of them bear to 
stay on in the place where Mary had lived, and 

therefore a few weeks later they all separated. 

109 



Frances Willard 

Oliver married, and went far away to Denver, 
Colorado; Mr. and Mrs. Willard went back to 
Janesville, and Frank became " Preceptress of 
Natural Sciences " at the North-West Female 
College . 

"Aug. 21. — O dear; I don't know what it is that I 
would like to say. I am crowded with feeling, and it was 
never before so plain to me that I am without power 
of expression. Mary didn't get well — that is the keynote 
to all my thoughts. I was so sure she would. I refused 
to think it possible that she could die. . . . This has 
crushed out all other feelings, except a vague sense 
of incompleteness, of wanting some one, something — a 
reaching out toward the future life almost with yearning." 

"Aug. 29. — On Monday I move on to my Alma 
Mater, the North-West Female College. I am elected 
Preceptress of Natural Sciences. Very humbly and sin- 
cerely I pray to God that I may be good over there, and 
do good. I was wild and wicked as a pupil ; in the same 
building may I be consistent and a Christian as a teacher. 
The last days are passing in this broken home. Life 
changes so. ... I am afraid that Mary's death will kill 
my mother." 

Just a year later Mr. and Mrs. Willard came 
back to Evanston, and lived at " Swampscot " 
again ; and it was there that Frank wrote her 
first and best book, a little memoir of her sister, 
" Nineteen Beautiful Years." It is very charm- 
ing, and tells very simply of the life of a 

no 



Independence 



very charming girl. As she said in the 
Introduction : — 

" The Life of Mary Willard has been written lovingly : 
for the hand which has traced its lines is the same that all 
through childhood held her chubby little fingers, as two 
sisters took their woodland rambles, or went along the 
shady path to school. And the story is — of how she 
lived among us with love and cheeriness ; how she was 
eager to grow wise ; how she tried to be of use, and 
to make it a happy thing for others that she lived ; 
how she grew very spiritual, very ■ meet for angels' 
company ' ; how Christ came for her one beautiful June 
morning, and she went away with Him." 

' Later, when Frances was an organiser, and 

a philanthropist, she wrote other books and 

pamphlets. But they are of a very different 

kind. Her English had been sadly spoilt by 

journalism, her ideas were too many for the 

pages, and her writing hurried and confused. 

She always had a certain freshness and vigour 

of expression, but in the later books it must be 

looked for under an overwhelming sentimentality 

of words, and amid a confusion of irrelevant 

matter— irrelevant, that is, to any one not 

deeply versed in the work and organisation of 

the Women's Christian Temperance Union. 

They are propaganda books, all of them, even 

in 



Frances Willard 

her own Autobiography, and her literary talent 
is not fairly to be judged by them. But this 
first book, to which she gave much time and 
loving care, is quite different. It shows the 
talent that she might have used. All her life 
she believed that she might have been a student 
and a writer of books, and at one time she felt 
that, if she had her life to live £>ver again, 
she would do differently, and choose the quiet 
path. But, later on, her active work seemed 
the more useful, and she began to see that she 
had chosen the path for which she was best 
fitted. " I've given up much in literature and 
art that seemed necessary once," she wrote on 
the flyleaf of a book of essays, " but now I 
think there will be time enough in heaven." 

Whether she could ever have been a really 
great author is doubtful, for her education was 
very wild and her taste very uncertain. She 
seemed to rank Whittier and Shakespeare 
together, and not to know what things she 
ought not to express. However, it is unfair to 
judge Frances Willard by the writing of her 
later years ; the real person is to be found deep 
down within them, but under such a mass of 
unfamiliar language that it is better not to 
look. Long study and familiarity will show her 

112 



Independence 

as she was, even from these books ; but a casual 
reading leads only to misunderstanding. 

She knew well enough that her books were 
horrible. 

" Few have learned more thoroughly than I, from the 
things that they have suffered, that the paths of true 
literature are shady and silent. . . . Far from the madding 
crowd lies the pastoral path of the life I longed for most, 
and treading whose piney wood aisles I might perhaps 
have thought out consolations for the fierce fighters of the 
plain : but with the battle on, and my own place chosen 
for me at the front, I shall never get beyond " Notes from 
the Saddle.'" 

Take away from this its wording, and the 
truth is undeniable. But " Nineteen Beautiful 
Years " is not, in any sense, a " Note from the 
Saddle." It gives Mary as she must have been, 
and the life she led, and " how she grew very 
spiritual," and in writing and talking of it 
Frances and her mother at last found consola- 
tion in their sorrow. 



"3 



CHARTER IV 

TEACHING 

During the year between Mary's death and the 
writing of " Nineteen Beautiful Years " Frances 
worked very hard. Mary's death had come 
upon her with the overwhelming strength of 
destiny, and it had taken away, for a time, all 
her interest in her own life. But hard work, 
and the girls she always loved, gradually com- 
forted her. Her Journal at first is rather sad. 

" Sept. 7. 1862. — I am reading Peter Bayne's ' Christian 
Life.' It will help me to prepare to go to Mary. I wish 
everything might." 

" Sept. 8.— Went home to dinner. Father and Mother are 
soon to go away. O Mother ! with your sad, sad face, 
and your black dress ! . . . I pray God to show me how 
I can be most comforting to you, how I can justly fill an 
only daughter's place." 

" Sept. 14. — The autumn sunlight is pouring in. I am 
here, but Mary, who was always with me, where is she ? 
Where is she who was so merry, who knew the people that 
I knew, who studied the books that I study, who liked 

114 



Teaching 

'Bleak House,' who laughed at Micawber and 
Traddles, and read the Daily Tribune? Where is 
she who picked up pebbles with me by the lake and ran 
races with me in the garden ? . . . How much a human 
heart can bear, and how it can adjust itself! Four months 
ago to-day I thought if Mary died I should be crazed ! it 
made me shiver just to take the thought on my brain's edge, 
and yet to-day I think of Mary dead just as naturally 
as I used to think of her alive. Yet God knows how 
well I loved my sister and how deeply she is mourned." 
"Sept. 1 8. — Forest Home is sold. . . . Alas for the 
changes of the great year of my history, 1862." 

She had loved Forest Home very dearly, and 
now in her unhappiness looked back regretfully 
to the " autumn days when with hunting -belt, 
bag, and cross -gun, sabre, luncheon, dog, and 
sister," she had hunted for plums by the river- 
side. The sight of "hazel and hickory nuts, 
and grapes with their purple bloom," always 
brought back to her instantly " the haze and 
dreaminess of Indian summer, when heaven 
seems lying just beyond the boundaries of our 
sight." 

But Forest Home was sold, and her family 
were to be separated, and she wrote very 
sadly :— 

" I am to lose sight of the old familiar landmarks : 
old things are passing from me whose love is for old 

ii5 



Frances Willard 

things. I am pushing out all by myself into the wide, 
wide sea." 

" Oct. 3. — Have been ill a week since I wrote last. 
Dear unforgetful Mother has nursed me up again. It 
almost paid to be sick to have people so sweet and 
mindful. . . Well, I conclude that I can not stand very 
much, not so much as I supposed. ... I thought this 
last week as I lay in bed that perhaps God, seeing 
how I wonder about that other life, would let me out 
into it, and it would seem so natural to my sister Mary 
to have me with her once again." 

" Oct. 12. — The girls go off to Sunday School. Miss 
Clark sits with me and we talk. She gets me to wrap 
up, and we go to walk in the garden. ... A little grey 
cat comes and sits by us. . . . I fall to wondering about 
this strange Being who made the little cat . . . and 
I wonder what God thinks as He sees this world that 
He has made, and we poor blind creatures groping along 
through it. Then I remember that ' God is Love/ and 
that thought quiets me. 

"Jan. 1. 1863. — ' Abraham Lincoln has fulfilled the 
pledge, the slaves are free ' — so said [Prof.] Jones to-night 
coming down late to tea, and on the instant all the 
girls clapped their hands so heartily that it was fine 
to see and hear them ; and far down in my heart 
something stirred, some chord was struck that gave out 
music. How much there was to think about just then ! 
Our girls sitting there, so well kept as they are, so 
good-looking, so happy and contented, with the thought 
in their heads that four millions of wretched beings 
became this day constitutionally free, and the feeling in 
their hearts of what a gift this freedom is to a human 

116 



Teaching 



soul. It was a thing that thrilled me beyond my power 
to tell. The future rises before me misty, dark, moist, 
like an advancing wave. Steadily I march toward it, 
there is no help, and God is in it, God Who manages 
affairs. 

" F.E.W., why do [you] plan to go on teaching ad 
infinitum, now here, now there, and then some other 
where ? Why do you content yourself with such a 
hedged up life . . . ? There is no need of it. You have 
abilities for something beyond this. Do you know that 
sometimes as you help arrange the room, or take your 
solitary walks, you think of splendid paragraphs that 
you never write out, — idle creature that you are ? . . . 
Stir yourself: be determined to write books if you please. 
Be intent upon it. God thinks it right to have ambitions : 
you are on earth, now deal with the earthly. ' Feel the 
victory in you/ that is your Father's phrase ... It is 
nonsense to think you can not do it while you are 
teaching." 

Frances was really too unhappy to stay on 
at Evanston. Everything reminded her of her 
sister, and of the pleasant home life that had 
come to an end, and in January her friends 
urged her to go away. They found a post for 
her at the Pittsburg Female College, and within 
a week after the suggestion was made she was 
in Pennsylvania. 

She was tired and listless, and found the work 

hard at first, and that reading did not interest 

117 



Frances Willard 

her, nor anything but prayer. But gradually 
her health came back, and her courage. She 
was haunted all the year by the thought of death, 
but nevertheless she tried to prepare herself for 
a more useful life, and worked and read and 
thought with a new earnestness. 

She seemed definitely now to have left 
childish things behind, and her diaries for the 
next few years, though less full, are far more 
serious than any of the earlier ones. She made 
friends, of course, with all the people in the 
Pittsburg Female College. It seemed her invari- 
able good fortune that wherever she went she 
made friends ; but this was not so much due to 
good fortune as to her nature. She always 
wanted to like people, always expected to find 
them nice, and always treated strangers as if 
they were friends ; and in consequence each of 
her friends could testify : " I don't know a 
person that doesn't like her." 

During the six months that she spent at 
Pittsburg Frances for the first time came out 
of the curiously good and sheltered Methodist 
world in which she had lived. She met different 
kinds of people, went to the theatre for the first 
time, and to concerts and the opera ; she saw 
new pictures and read new books, and went to 

118 



Teaching 

new churches, and all these things fired her 
imagination and filled her with a longing to 
travel. As she phrased it in her Western unex- 
pectedness : " Europe became part of my life 
programme." 

At this time she also heard John B. Gough, 
the great prohibitionist lecturer, speak on 
temperance. The crowd that went to hear him 
was very great, and almost frightened her by 
its size, for she was not yet used to great meet- 
ings. She felt herself a very insignificant part 
of that vast audience, and the distance between 
her and the lecturer " seemed like an abyss." 
The subject had no very special interest for her 
then, and this lecture was only a part of her 
general awakening. 

The delight with which she realised that all 

these things meant intellectual development is 

very characteristic of the middle West ; and the 

energy with which she followed up every clue, 

and seized upon every chance to grow educated 

is very characteristic of Miss Willard herself. 

She believed that one should " enter every openJ 

door," that there was no more reason to be 

afraid of the step ahead than of the step 

behind; and so with almost indiscriminate 

energy she rushed on towards " culture," and 

119 



Frances Willard 

her love of life came back to her. One of her 
friends wrote to her, at this time, a comment 
on her character that remained true as long as 
she lived : " Frank, you have the hungriest soul 
I ever saw in a human being. It will never 
be satisfied. " 

Her Journals tell the story of her own de- 
velopment : — 

"Jan. 26. '63. — I'm glad I came here. I am to like it 
I know. By-and-by I am to have sweet friends here : 
and I am to learn much that is new and good. I am 
to see a new side of life — indeed I have already." 

"Jan. 29. — I'm going to hear the ' Sage of Concord ' 
[Emerson] lecture on Tuesday evening. That's an 
advantage I get by coming off here. I can see some 
of the men who have pleased and taught me by the 
fireside at home — whose sweet wise words I've heard 
my sister Mary read in her pure young voice . . . O 
Life Life ! 

" Think of a man's career ! Of his broader sphere 
than ours. Is it not so ? In all this week I have not 
stepped my foot outside this house. Have been just 
here. Yet I've been well, and able to go out What 
would a healthy man have thought of such confinement ? 
Til extend my sphere some day ! I don't complain — I 
hope I don't. Only, sitting here, I thought about it all." 

" Feb. 2. — When will my little role be acted, and 
I dismissed by the Manager? I hope the soul don't 
sleep." 

" Feb. 10. — Just received the kindest of letters from 

120 



Teaching 



my dear Father and Mother. This passage, quoted by 
Mother, seems to me, tired and ill as I am, like a voice 
from the Heavens : — 

t ' To be spiritually minded is Life and Peace.' " 

"Feb. 15. — One year ago to-day Mr. F. and I formally 
severed our engagement. I told him not to think there 
was no darkness in the path I was going to tread, or 
that I saw no light in the one from which I turned 
away. Has there not been darkness this year ? . . . 
[He] would have sheltered and strengthened me ! If 
it were to do again I would act as before. Yet why 
does not God let me love and be loved by some one who 
can help me ? I'm not happy. I had much better 
own it." 

" Feb. 16. — To-day I feel more hopeful. I am disposed 
to make the best of things — to learn to grow all I can. 
. . . To this end I rose ' with the lark ' this morning, 
and read Cleveland's ' English Literature of the Nineteenth 
Century' until prayers. ... I have a new hunger for 
the loaves and fishes of a fortunate winter." 

" Feb. 18.— Pittsburg shall yield me profit, if not 
pleasure. ... I read a good deal and learn ever so 
many new things every day. ... I get so hungry to 
know things. . . . I'll teach these girls as well as possible. 
They haven't much love of learning, poor young 
things. ... I wouldn't be a child again on any account, 
with my starved and ' horrible little soul.' " 

"Feb. 21. — Not as carelessly happy as I was at 
Evanston I must confess myself — but more taught — 
improving quite rapidly I think. It will pay — no matter 
if I am sometimes forlorn." 

" Feb. 25. — I'm getting out into the world a little, 

121 



Frances Willard 

and find it a place where one must have courage, 
strength, patience and intelligence." 

" {Extract from Mrs. Willard' s letter?) 

" ' It seems a long time since we said good-bye at 
the gate. But I long ago decided that whatever is best 
for my children is for me best, so I am glad that you 
went away, if you are glad.' " 

"Dear Mother! Her love and mindfulness have never 
failed me ! I am as sure to have them as I am to have the 
sunshine, air to breathe or God's mercy exercised toward 
me." 

"April 6. — I wish that the amenities of life might 
concern themselves with me : the scent of flowers, the 
purple of fruits, the crimson of sunsets — the ripple of 
waves, the whispers of trees ! It is very smoky here. 

" Every kind word and friendly deed influence me much 
— especially since I've lost those who love me best." 

" Ap. 12. — The days pass tolerably. I don't think that 
I should say more. Routine is hateful to me : I have 
learned this of late. I sin against what is best in me when 
I so surround myself . . . that I would push Time's chariot 
forward with double speed if it were in my power. The 
grave is near enough and the future awful enough without 
my wishing that either should be anticipated in my life. 
The Logic is good — it shall make me say a long good-bye 
to Pittsburg on the 26th of June." 

Here, as everywhere, Frank was popular with 

the girls and the other teachers. There were 

" invitations to suppers where oysters and 

halibut, ice-cream and jelly -cake," were " abun- 

122 



Teaching 

dantly dispensed to the shrivelled displeased 
gustatory nerves of schoolmarms," and there 
were many long talks with her new friends on 
the meaning of life. 

Carlyle had a great fascination for her at this 
time, and she read all his books, and puzzled 
over what he meant, and the problem of exist- 
ence. She had learnt to accept death, and in 
some sense to understand it ; but life and the 
meaning of it seemed to hover just beyond the 
reach of her thoughts. 

"The open secret fascinates me. Sometimes it looms 
up misty and awful for a moment, but when I fairly look 
it has disappeared unread. ... O if I could but see ! 
Two afternoons ago I was upon the street. . . . Just as 
I passed a forge where a blackened man was working, 
a lady crossed the street ahead of me. The instant that 
I looked at her a hint of the Open Secret of the Universe 
flashed through me, taking my breath. It went again an 
instant after — I cannot tell what it was. But the vastness 
of it weighed me down. Are we to read it in this life, I 
wonder ? . . We may talk of it, long for it — learn its 
alphabet perhaps. . . . But oh of late it is almost always 
in my thoughts : it winds itself with every reverie of Mary. 
Mary knows." 

" May 5. Evening. — Sitting in my room. What is it, 
I wonder, that I keep wanting to say ? It never comes 
to my lips nor to the point of my pen. I am almost sure 
that God does not mean that I shall say it while I live on 

123 



] 



Frances Willard 

earth. It stirs in every pulse : it lies back of every true 
thought I have, but it has never yet been said ... it lives 
on in my heart unsaid — even in my prayers unsaid." 

"May 28. — Rev. Charlie Fowler is married, and he with 
Mrs. F. give a reception in Chicago this evening. It's 
a queer queer world. I can not take it in. Eighteen 
months ago I used sometimes idly to scrawl these words 
on odd bits of paper " Frances E. Fowler," "Frank F," &c. 
And now without any emotion I have heard of the woman 
who has taken the place I might have had. ... I always 
pray for Mr. F. I promised that I would. Last night 
I just put in his wife's name too, and prayed very 
earnestly that they might love each other — that they 
might be happy and good. ..." 

"May 29. — [This] incident stirred my heart and taught 
me that I am not fossilising. 

"Yesterday on the street cars . . . several negroes [were] 
opposite us. A man in the blue uniform signalled the car. 
He came limping up. Eagerly the driver helped him 
on the platform. One of the negroes, a very black and 
noble looking young fellow, sprang forward and motioned 
him to his seat. . . . The tears came rushing to my eyes 
as the poor negro man turned toward the soldier. . . . The 
negroes know right well for what this war is waging." 

"June 16. — Pittsburg is in a ferment. Two thousand 

men working on fortifications : Gen. Lee's army is said 

to be approaching: martial law to be declared: trains 

from the South forbidden to come to the city &c. Miss D. 

is very much alarmed. The girls are depressed, especially 

those living to the southward. But I'm not troubled 

a bit . . . it's quite exciting though. There are so many 

false alarms that it don't do to receive all we hear as 

Gospel on any subject." 

124 



Teaching 

Throughout these Journals there is strangely 
little mention of the war. It was a thing so 
far away and so unimaginable that it made 
little difference in the lives of the Northerners, 
except at times of special excitement, when the 
news of defeats, or victories, would set all the 
country shouting. It seems, of course, as if 
past history must always have been more 
strange and thrilling at the time than present 
history is to-day ; and it is interesting to have 
proof of how remote a thing General Lee's army 
seemed to a school teacher in Pennsylvania. 

In July Frances went back to Evanston, and 
found the life there lonely and hard to bear. 
Most of her friends had married, or had left 
the place. Oliver had gone, and Mary was 
dead, and it seemed impossible to build up again 
the old happy existence. Mr. and Mrs. Willard 
were sad, their affairs were going badly, and 
they were none of them very happy. But 
Frances would not allow herself to give up. 

"July. — Life is rather queer, but it pays, for all. I want 
to be good and get ready for something better than I've 
yet seen in the way of animated existence." 

She read a great deal, and found great 
pleasure in books, and sometimes they took " all 

125 



/ 



Frances Willard 

the harm out of life for awhile." She also wrote 
a good deal that summer. Her literary ambi- 
tions were at their height ; she sent articles to 
magazines and papers, wrote essays and began 
novels and stories, and wrote and finished 
" Nineteen Beautiful Years." Some of these 
articles and stories still exist, scrawled in copy- 
books in faded ink and untidy writing. They 
show an extraordinary amount of talent, a 
freshness and daring that give to some of the 
phrases a real literary quality. The subjects 
are commonplace enough, and the words often 
sentimental, but the whole effect is rather unex- 
pectedly charming. Her mother and father 
encouraged her work, and her friends all 
approved . 

tl Fowler is the same friend, kind and helpful as he was 
always, advising me as to my literary pursuits, and 
encouraging me by his faith that I shall have success. 
He is doing nobly as a Minister, exceeding even our hopes. 
In a few weeks he is to publish a book refuting Colenso on 
the Pentateuch. Poor fellow ! He looks worn and tired." 

In October she went to New York to attend 

to the publishing of " Nineteen Beautiful Years," 

which had been accepted by Harper Bros. This 

excursion was, of course, a time of bewildered 

happiness. 

126 



Teaching 

" My visit [to New York] has been delightful, though 
my pitiful mysterious dazedness has inconvenienced 
me more than I will attempt to tell." 

While she was in New York she stayed with 
Bishop Forster's family, whom she had known 
when they lived in Evanston. To them she 
read her MSS. — nervous, of course, and timid 
— but full of loving admiration for her sister, 
and hoping that they might see Mary's worth 
through her own imperfect descriptions. She 
could not keep from crying as she read, nor 
could her hearers keep from crying as they 
listened— even the Bishop hid his face in his 
hands ; and Frances was glad of their sympathy. 
To publish a first book, and especially one so 
full of most intimate beliefs and feelings, would 
be to most people an anxiety, a thing of hesita- 
tions and embarrassments. But to Frances it 
was quite simple. " For myself I liked the 
world, believed it friendly, and could see no 
reason why I might not confide in it." It was 
this spirit that made friends for her everywhere, 
that made every one ready to confide in her, 
and that gave her such marvellous power as a 
leader . 

But as yet she was only an unknown teacher, 
publishing her first book, seeing New York 

127 



Frances Willard 

for the first time, full of curiosity about every- 
thing. 

From New York she went on to Boston and 
to Philadelphia, exploring the big cities of the 
East. 

"Boston, Oct. 19. — What is the use of writing when one 
sees so much ! " 

"Philadelphia, Dec. 7. — Have seen a great deal, learned, 
written letters, corrected proofs. Can not express a life 
that has little undercurrent. Wish I were good. Think 
I'm thankful." 

From Philadelphia she went to Vermont, to 
stay with her father's Puritan brothers and 
sisters. The very strict, quiet community she 
found there greatly distressed her ; she admired 
the honesty and the goodness of their way of 
life, but was grieved at their " near horizon." 
" I'm sure God meant beauty to be enjoyed," 
she wrote, " and did not mean us to lead such 
thwarted lives." Her own horizon was widen- 
ing, and she wished she could share with every 
one the keen joy of discovering the world. 

In January, 1864, she went back to Pitts- 
burg to teach again for several months. While; 
there she formed the wild, adventurous plan of 

going to Stuttgart as assistant to one of the 

128 



Teaching 

other teachers who was opening a school there. 
But her father " was so scandalised by my bold- 
ness M that she gave up the idea, and came back 
to Evanston. But she was full of restless 
ambitions, and wanted to branch out in any new 
direction. 

" If iron custom had left me free to choose 
my line of life, I should have been either an 
architect or an orator," she wrote, little think- 
ing how famous an orator she was yet to 
become . 

And again :— 

"If it be ambitious to have no fear of failure in any 
undertaking, to that I must plead guilty. 

" No one could persuade me to become a professor of 
mathematics or of domestic economy, but outside of these 
and what they imply, I can think of no helpful calling 
that I would not undertake, and there is none that would 
render me anxious." 

She would have liked to be a minister, a 
journalist, a missionary, a politician, or an 
author ; she wanted to join the Sanitary Com- 
missions, or to go south to teach the negroes— 
and she undoubtedly had capacity for all of 
these careers. However, she resigned herself 
to being a teacher, and undertook the Grove 

School in Evanston in the winter of 1865. 

129 k 



Frances Willard 

It was while she was teaching in this school 
that Frances made friends with Miss Kate 
Jackson, who was her companion in her travels 
in Europe and her great friend all her life. 
Miss Jackson had been a teacher in the South 
until the war broke out, and had then come to 
live in Evanston. During this winter Mr. 
Willard sold " Swampscot," and built and moved 
into " Rest Cottage," which was to be Frank's 
home for the remainder of her life, the centre 
from which she was to start out for her work 
and to which she was to come back to rest. It 
is now almost a place of pilgrimage— kept still 
just as it was when Mrs. Willard lived there, 
and when Frances came and went. But its 
pictures, its books, and its memories are chiefly 
of the Women's Christian Temperance Union 
work, and it does not recall much of the days 
before that work began. However, its " par- 
lour," its " yard," and its " rocking-chairs," and 
a suggestion of simplicity and cordiality and 
democracy that pervade the place are all typical 
of the provincial progressiveness of the middle 
West ; and the trees that surround it, brought 
from Forest Home, are, as Frances said, her 
father's best monument. 

In the spring of 1866 Miss Willard had her 

130 




FRANCES WILLARD. 
Age 28. 



To face page 139 



Teaching 



first experience of philanthropic organisation. 
The Garrett Biblical Institute was in need of 
money, and the American Methodist Ladies' 
Centenary Association was formed to raise it. 
To this Association Miss Willard was made 
corresponding secretary, and for it she worked 
for several months. 

An appeal was sent out to the Methodist 
women all over the country, and for the first 
time Frank was plunged into the voluminous 
correspondence and the bewildering details of 
a philanthropist's work. 

But in this year the Willards lost some of 
their money, and it became necessary for her 
to give up this work and to teach again. She 
secured a post in the Genesee Wesleyan Semi- 
nary, a co -educational school at Lima, New York, 
and Miss Kate Jackson went there with her in 
September. 

Her Journal shows her to have been quite 
happy during these months, as she always was 
when she was teaching. 

" Oct. 6. 1866. — Girls, girls, girls! Questions upon 
questions. Dear me, it is no small undertaking to be 
elder sister to the whole 180 of them. . . . They treat 
me beautifully, and I think I reciprocate." 

" Oct. 24.— Prepared to talk to my girls about room- 

131 



Frances Willard 

keeping. This is my hobby. I believe, whatever I can 
not do, I can make a home attractive." 

" Oct. 29. — I went down to a political mass meeting 
addressed by Horace Greeley. Here was American 
politics manifested by a crowd of yeomanry with bands 
and such mottoes as " Down with the One Man Power," 
"Congress Must and Shall be Sustained," "Andy John- 
son Swinging Around the Circle." This motley throng 
surged to and fro nearly taking us off our feet." 

"Nov. 26. — Girls are ten times as quick as boys. In 
Rhetoric the last do wretchedly. I should think they 
would take hold and study for very shame." 

"Nov. 28. — Went down town in the rain to see about 
my new dress, bonnet, &c. These evils of a lady's life 
are very irksome to me, yet quite inevitable." 

At this school, as at all the others, she was 
very successful. There was something vivid 
about her that influenced the girls, and one of 
her students has described how they would all 
cluster round her, listening to her conversation 
and her unexpected turns of phrase, and how 
they would go to her for advice and help on 
every subject, and how they all looked upon 
her as their friend and companion. 

The other teachers liked her too, and felt her 

influence. All the schools in which she taught 

became, for the time being, less conventional, 

less formal. The scholars would take their 

turns at " quizzing " the teachers, and would 

132 



Teaching 

write questions on the blackboard for them to 
answer. Good conduct became a competitive 
game, with a Bank of Charter to issue rewards, 
and in this game the teachers took their part ; 
everything in the daily routine that could be 
made interesting became so ; essays ceased to 
be asked for on Spring and the advantages of 
town versus country life, but turned on the 
students' own careers, or on politics. She lent 
her books to the girls, and shared her ambitions 
with them, and they loved her weekly sermons 
and even her scoldings. 

There is no doubt that her experience as a 
teacher helped her in her later work. She 
learned to know so many people, to judge what 
would rouse or influence them, and how to 
appeal to their best natures ; and it was this 
intimate knowledge of the good in human nature 
that made her such a successful and such an 
idolised leader of women. 

At the end of the year the head of the 
college urged her to speak before the united 
societies at commencement. He said there was 
no reason why a woman should not do this, 
and that she was by far the best person to do 
it. But Frances refused. " Such beatitude is 
not for a woman, and I could not face the grim 

i33 



Frances Willard 

visage of public prejudice.'' This was irf 1867. 
Not quite four years later she made her first 
public speech in Chicago before a large mixed 
audience. " So goes the world," she says 
characteristically in her Autobiography ; " it is 
always better and broader farther on" 

In the spring of this year, 1867, Mr. Willard 
fell ill of a rapid consumption such as Mary 
had had. They went in September to Church - 
ville, his early home, and he stayed there to be 
nursed by his wife and his sister, while Frances 
secured another post as a teacher in order to 
earn the money that the family now needed. 
But just as she had started she received a letter 
from her mother that made her feel it was her 
duty to stay with them. When a thing seemed 
right to Frances Willard all was simple enough, 
for she did it at once without question. Now 
she turned back, before even she had reached her 
school, and stayed with her father until he died. 

It was a sad and difficult duty, for the nursing 
was very hard, and Frances was quite unfitted 
to undertake the cares and housework that were 
her task. But she managed to keep up her 
interest in reading, and even found time to go 
on with her writing, though her nights were 
sleepless and her days full of care. 

134 



Teaching 



"Jan. 1868. — I watched from one o'clock till five this 
morning and am nervous and distraught. How far 
from choice are my present surroundings, circumstances 
and occupations ! Yet I know I am doing my duty, 
and what better or more valuable effort could I make? 
Some day my turn will come to be blighted in body 
and soul, and mysteriously withdrawn into unknown 
worlds. . . ." 

"Jan. 9. — How this watching sets my nerves on edge, 
and I can't help it ; I sat up again from midnight till 
nearly morning. For the first time I said in my heart 
that in my sober judgment life did not pay." 

On the 24th Josiah Willard died, and Frank 
and her mother and Miss Jackson went sadly 
back to Evanston. There they lived very 
quietly until the spring. Their money was 
nearly all gone, and they had many worries. 
Oliver was not doing well, and the world prob- 
ably seemed rather a serious place to Frances. 
She was now twenty-eight, and had been teach- 
ing for nine years, and there was no prospect 
before her but to go on teaching for the rest 
of her life. Mary's death had made an indelible 
impression upon her, and her father's illness and 
the long months of nursing she had just passed 
through had brought home to her more than 
ever the uncertainty of life. There must have 
been at this time a blank in the scheme of 

i35 



Frances Willard 

things, a dreariness in the prospect ahead, and 
a sadness in the prospect behind that were 
depressing. 

There was just one thing that could fill this 
blank and cheer this prospect, a thing for which 
Frances had often longed, yet hardly dared 
really to expect : and this one thing her friend 
Kate Jackson was able to provide— that is, a trip 
to Europe. To an American from the middle 
■West, Europe stood for " culture," and for all 
that was romantic. To go oneself to historic 
places, hear foreign languages, and see great 
cathedrals was, fifty years ago, at once the 
wildest adventure and the most sacred privilege. 
In itself it was education, and to have been to 
Europe was to have understood all that the 
Past contained : America held the Future, 
Europe the Past, and to know both was to know 
the World. To Frances all this was true ; again 
and again she had listened eagerly to tales of 
foreign travel ; she had sat at the feet of those 
who had made the great pilgrimages, and had 
looked reverently at their trophies and photo- 
graphs. Every foolish stick or stone that came 
across the Atlantic had its own value and its 
own magic. Paris, Rome, London—each had in 
her imagination their distinctive charm ; each 

136 



Teaching 

had been dreamt of and studied while she 
taught her Western scholars, but the thought of 
seeing them was far away and mysterious. And 
now just at the moment when the world seemed 
empty and blank, this chance came to her, 
changing the whole face of things. 

Miss Jackson had plenty of money, and Frances 
did not hesitate to go with her because she her- 
self had none. Mr. Jackson, Kate's father, wrote 
approving of the plan, saying that he had long 
wanted his daughter to go to Europe, and was 
glad to find in Frances the right person to go 
with her. And so the glorious adventure was 
planned, and the little family at Evanston fell 
into a great bustle of preparation. 

Frank's interest in everything revived again. 
She secured a post as European correspondent 
to one of the Chicago papers, and began to 
read books on art. She and Kate talked French 
together and planned their route again and 
again. The " friction of life " was negligible 
now that this great prospect was before them. 
They went to lectures again, and reverted to 
the eager state of longing for improvement. 

As their departure came nearer the prepara- 
tions increased. Clothes had to be bought, and 
trunks packed. Rest Cottage had to be made 

i37 



Frances Willard 

ready for tenants, and Mrs. Willard taken to 
Appleton, Wisconsin, where she was to stay with 
Oliver and his family. Then Frank and Kate 
came back to Evanston, said goodbye to their 
friends and started off, first to Washington 
for a little foretaste of sightseeing, and then to 
New York, and so farther forward across the 
Atlantic to the great adventure of their lives. 



138 



CHAPTER V 

EUROPE 

Miss Willard and Miss Jackson stayed abroad 
nearly two years and a half. They were 
indefatigable sightseers, and worked their way 
steadily through the capitals of Europe. They 
went to Russia, Palestine, Egypt, and Greece, 
and were always unwilling to turn back from 
their journeys, and always eager to learn more 
and to see more. 

During all this time Frances kept her Journals 
very faithfully, and they still exist, in twenty 
miscellaneous volumes, written in the hurried 
writing of a traveller. Very curious reading 
these twenty volumes make, with their mixture 
of ignorance and enthusiasm and shrewdness, 
and they give a complete picture of the American 
tourist of 1868. Pages and pages, of course, 
are filled with admiration of sights, other pages 
with the ludicrous or troublesome misfortunes 
common to all travellers, also with long descrip- 

139 



Frances Willard 

tions of their companions and complaints of 
their inertia, and other pages still with longings 
for home and the oiews that came in home 
letters. In all this they are like twenty volumes 
of any other tourist seeing pictures and famous 
places for the first time ; but what is interesting 
about them, and so individual, is the " teachable " 
enthusiasm of their author, and the strong deter- 
mination she had to see every possible thing she 
could, and to see them all truly. But she was 
no snobbish traveller, and was not ashamed of 
mistaking caviare for blackberries, nor of admit - 
ing that she liked table d'hote " because of the 
opportunity of seeing a large company of 
cultivated people at their best ! " 

The background of Evanston, and its phrase- 
ology, contrasts curiously with the (Ecumenical 
Council and the outbreak of the Franco -Prussian 
War ; but this interest, after all, is a general 
one. Any American of that date must have 
watched the Republican movements in France 
and in Prussia, and felt his patriotism 
strengthened by the sight of " the effete 
monarchies of Europe." 

Almost every traveller reads " Othello " in 

Venice and " Romeo and Juliet " in Verona, and 

thrills at the sound of his National Anthem played 

140 



Europe 

on the fiords of Norway : almost every one is 
excited at approaching " the city of Romulus 
and Remus/' and any Western schoolmistress 
might notice " the mysterious flight of just such 
a flock of birds as must have decided its 
location." But every traveller is not like Miss 
Willard. The way she travelled and the quick 
results that her broadening outlook produced 
are a very clear indication of her nature, and 
the Frank that sailed home in 1870 was 
really different from the Frank that sailed away 
in 1868. This difference was not just in the 
application of a little " culture/' nor in the 
acquisition of a little French and Italian, nor 
in an advance in her knowledge of history and 
geography. It lay in a real widening of her 
mind, that gave her a tolerance for differences 
and a sense of proportion. She had learnt to 
look for the good in things as well as in people, 
and to face the bad in things with all her old 
determination to put it right, but with a new 
knowledge of the difficulties of this attempt. 
The conventional solution of any problem was 
swept entirely out of her mind ; problems must 
be solved, she still felt, but the way to solve 
them must be tested by experiment and not by 
rule. She came back from her years of travel 

141 



Frances Willard 

more original than she set out, having survived 
the flood of orthodox travellers' impressions : 
and though her language is still sentimental, 
underneath it her meaning remains perfectly 
genuine. It seldom gives any true picture of 
Frances Willard ta quote what she has written, 
but a few extracts taken here and there, from 
her " individual eye-glancings and brain-work- 
ings in foreign lands," will show, to some degree, 
the lessons she was learning. 

"On board 1 City of Paris I May 31, 1868. — For the next 
two or three days I thought and did unutterable things. 
Sunday is a perfect blank. In it I had just this one 
thought ( Let me lie still : let me keep this diaphragm 
in equipoise.' " 

"June 6. — Dear me, I must abridge : I have only got 
to Monday night, and here I am on Thursday's page ! 
Well, we noticed everything, even to the shape of the 
chairs and the pattern of the paper at the Queenstown 
station, talked incessantly, and learned a great 
deal. . . . 

" Not to go through Europe blindfold one must duly 
and daily learn his lesson." 

"We travelled 2nd. What nonsense to throw away 
money on getting one's physique carried about, when it 
might be turned into books — pictures — longer journeys ! " 

142 



Europe 

There were, of course, many things to be met 
with in Europe that scandalised these good 
Evanston Methodists, to whom Catholicism 
seemed wrapped in scarlet robes and theatres 
were the very gates of hell. 

''July 26, '68. — Kate and I, in recoil from Parisian 
levity fell to reading our dear neglected Bible to each 
other this morning after our late breakfast, and to talking 
of the only things that last. For the first time in our 
lives we heard this morning when we waked the roar 
of wheels more stunning than on a weekday." 

"Aug. 21. — For the first time in my life I laid my 
eyes on a live bit of royalty. 

" My ideas of diamonds are fully met. 

" For myself I am not a Republican in theory alone. 
My Father's and Mother's principles are a part of my 
constitution, and all human beings, plain or coloured, shall 
receive from me the treatment merited by personal 
character and achievement." 

11 Sept. — Kate and I are very much stirred up and 
distressed about our ignorance. How I enjoy learning — 
more even than knowing ! " 

It is interesting to notice that at this time Miss 
Willard was not a rigid total abstainer. She 
and Miss Jackson, through fear of bad water, 
drank a little wine or beer while they were 
travelling, though in after years she thought 
this had been unnecessary. 

i43 



Frances Willard 

"Berlin, Oct. 30. — My beer muddles my brain." 
"Nov. 23. — I was so chilled and miserable. . . . Kate 
conferred with kind Mr. M. who advised two stiff glasses 
of rum and water, drinking which I escaped all evil 
consequences and — lived in my own world awhile ! " 

" Nov. 30. — Germany is the purgatory of women and 
dogs." 

In December, 1868, they settled in Paris, 
where for six months they attended lectures and 
tried to study French characteristics. In par- 
ticular they were interested in French women and 
their position in the State, and their chances 
for education, and many of the things they learnt 
made them " think regretfully of our home 
customs in this regard." 

They made friends with many of the English 
and American students, and with a lady " horn- 
less and hoofless, although a woman physician." 
They also met some of the French leaders of 
the feminist movement, and their talk and en- 
couragement no doubt helped Frances greatly 
in the decision to which she was slowly and 
almost unwillingly coming. Of her talks with 
these French ladies she writes : — 

" Tenses and genders I ignored sublimely, but my 
earnestness and my infinitives were well received, and 
I got on famously." 

144 



Europe 

Perhaps the most important thing about this 
European trip was its connection in Miss 
Willard's mind with the ''woman question." 
She thought she was abroad to study art, and 
history, and literature, and to steep herself in 
civilisation : but what was really happening was 
that she was finding out her own absorbing 
interest in social reform, and in particular in 
those aspects of it that relate to women. She 
and Kate had read John Stuart Mill's speech on 
the first Women's Suffrage Bill before they 
sailed, and they had been very enthusiastic about 
it then, and their enthusiasm grew with their 
travels . 

Many pages of the Journals are devoted to 
this subject. Soon Frank had decided to study 
it in France and England, and when she went 
home " to talk in public of the matter, and cast 
myself with what weight or weakness I possess 
against the only foe of what I conceive to be 
the justice of the subject, unenlightened public 
opinion." Sometimes she " felt the victory in 
her," often she did not. " Always I have dimly 
felt it to be my vocation," she wrote, " but 
a constitutional dread of criticism and love 
(too strong) of approbation have held me 
back." 

145 l 



Frances Willard 

"March '6g. — I have pondered painfully to-day upon 
the fate of woman as suck, and left off where I began. 
1 Now we know but in part.' " 

"April 23. '69. — What has the future for me? I still 
ask as doubtfully at twenty-nine as I did at nineteen. 
When I go home I must take fate in hand. . . . 

" My own timidity is so great that I think I shrink from 
what I believe my true occupation. 



" To be great, to be powerful, to have a nation hanging 
on one's will — dreams dim and momentary of such a 
destiny come to me. . . . 

" Then to be good — that one's single will might be the 
good angel of millions, that is the supreme dream of my 
intellect. . . ." 



At last it was all settled : on her thirtieth 
birthday she writes : — 

" If I know my own heart (as good people say in class 
meetings) I was never braver for the future nor half 
so well prepared in resolution and in intellect to do some 
service to my fellow-women. 

" I can do so much more when I go home. I shall 
have a hold on life, and a fitness for it so much more 
assured. Perhaps — who knows? — there may be noble 
wide-reaching work for me in the steady mature years 
that stretch before me, the years of intelligent labour for 
which we are so long in getting ready — some of us at 

least." 

146 



Europe 

But all this while she was not neglecting Paris 
and its sights : — 

" I have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. 
I thank Heaven that I know at least my ignorance, and 
maintain an intent and teachable attitude." 

"Jan. 10. 1869. — We are much diverted by the veloci- 
pedes so common in the Paris streets. A youth followed 
our omnibus a long distance, looking like a crab running 
on its hind legs, an object outrageous to the eyes, but 
getting over the ground in a surprising manner, and 
managing his curious machine with great skill and as 
much grace as could be in what is absolutely graceless 
in itself." 

Some of the other things to be seen in the 
Paris streets, however, she did not find so divert- 
ing, and after the Carnival she was even driven to 
exclaim : — 

" I am glad the ocean is so wide. Would it were still 
more vast, to separate our young and Christian civilisation 
more completely from these old infidel shores." 

During this stay in Paris Miss Willard often 
spent seven hours a day at her writing. She 
sent many articles back to the American news- 
papers, and by this work she earned all the 
money she had at this time ; for she would not, 
of course, let Kate do more than pay her travel- 
ling expenses. 'Her articles were not good, as 

i47 



Frances Willard 

she herself realised, and the reason was very 
characteristic : — 

" Somehow the zest is gone from composition. When 
I was twenty it was my highest pleasure — now it is a 
sort of task. Reading the crispy journals and books of 
the French has wearied me with my own prolix vapid 
style. It seems impossible for me to learn the meaning 
of the word condense. . . . But unhappily or otherwise, 
everything interests me so intensely that it is very difficult 
not to try, like the imbecile I am, to tell all. 

In June, 1869, they set off again on their 
" oannpn-ball style of travelling," and rushed 
through Belguim and Switzerland to Italy. 

"I feel oppressively my ignorance of History. Ignorance 
pays its taxes promptly and to the uttermost farthing. 

" I feel giddy and unnatural, but my head stands firm, 
and I am equal to a good deal yet. 

" I am a slave to my determination of getting all I 
can out of my travels, squeezing the orange." 

In this determination they " put their hats upon 
their reckless heads " and climbed the moun- 
tains. They took a great interest in Switzerland, 
then the only Republic in Europe, but in 
September they pushed on into Italy. There 
Frances felt she had come to a promised land : 

nothing in her travels excited her so much as 

148 



Europe 

when at last she reached' " the city of Romulus 
and Remus." 

' The platitudes I have recorded concerning 
other cities seem doubly stupid here/' she 
wrote ; and she left the sights undescribed . 
They stayed in Rome for three months, study- 
ing the language and the religion, and watching 
the gorgeous pageant of the (Ecumenical 
Council. Frances grew more sympathetic 
towards Catholicism, and even felt " a bending 
tendency" in St. Peter's! 

"It is All Saints' Day, let that be what it will. I 
wish indeed it were their day in truth, for I think they 
were an admirable set of men and women for the most 
part." 

This adrnisskxn, from one brought up as Frank 
had been, was a striking proof of an inde- 
pendent mind. An ignorant prejudice against 
Catholicism was, of course, rife amongst the 
various evangelical sects in America. They 
thought the Church of Rome was the tool of 
Satan, its priests his emissaries, and its doctrines 
blasphemous and idolatrous. And not only this, 
they also condemned it as vulgar. F_or the most 
part only the lower class of people in the middle 

West were Catholics, people at the bottom of the 

149 



Frances Willard 

rigid social scale of a democracy, and this had 
its effect, inevitably, upon the judgment passed 
upon that great institution. Until Frank came 
to Rome and herself talked with Catholics, she 
had, of course, accepted all this. But now she 
found she could see both goodness and beauty 
where she had 1 thought to find only wickedness 
and corruption, and she was glad. She still 
hated forms and ceremonies, and was far from 
wishing to be a Catholic ; and she still hated 
abuses and the papal power, but her uneducated 
fear were gone for ever. 

It was while they were in Rome that they 
heard the good news of the adoption of Woman 
Suffrage in Wyoming, which, taken with their 
observation of the very subordinate position of 
women in Italy, made them more enthusiastic 
than was quite reasonable about America. 
" Ah, native land, the world's hope, the Gospel's 
triumph, the millennium's dawn, are all with 
thee ! " 

From Italy they went to Egypt, and from there 
to the Holy Land— finding in the East still more 
evidence of the " degradation of women " and 
its fatal effect upon civilisation. Thinking of 
these things at the foot of the Pyramids, Frances 
" turned towards the sunset " facing home, and 

150 



Eurooe 

£ 

11 rode onwards full of thoughts, and hopes, and 
purposes." 

They rode through Syria with a company of 
Methodist divines, among whom was their old 
friend Dr. Bannister. The long daily rides and 
rough camps at night brought them many adven- 
tures and discomforts. " Travelling has its prose 
side, and I'm glad I had the opportunity of 
finding it out," Frank wrote cheerfully in her 
notebook, and then faced the mosquitoes and 
the weariness with a new courage. 

From Palestine to Greece, and from Greece 
through Vienna to London the travellers hurried. 

"Oh, if I were as anxious to be good as to be wise : 
to learn the things of God as I am to study His world 
and the history of His image, what a happy happy thing 
would it be for me." 

But at last they got tired of travelling, and 
began to long for home. 

"May 12. 1870. — I wish I could leave for home to- 
morrow. Am glad to hurry up, for what is best in the 
world I have now seen. . . . For once I can cease my 
Oliver Twist cry of ' more ' and substitute ' enough' ! 
I am desperately sick of sight-seeing as a pursuit, and 
so anxious to reach Paris and take a long breath that 
I can hardly restrain my impatience." 

151 



Frances Willard 

From the " opinionated island " therefore, 
they returned to Paris to spend there their last 
weeks in Europe. They arrived just as war 
was declared, and passed exciting days watch- 
ing the Paris crowds, hearing the rumours of 
battle, and concealing their strong sympathy 
with Germany. They paid their last visits to 
the Louvre, saw their last play, and then, full of 
excitement, they sailed for home in August, 1870. 

Her mother's letters had been a great com- 
fort to Frances when she was homesick, as she 
had inevitably been. They came with their 
steady encouragement, telling her that things 
went on very quietly at Evanston " except 
when Destiny swoops down upon us in a birth 
or death." They told of all the village affairs : 
of " the split in our Church on the question of 
a new building site," and of " the unfoldings of 
Destiny concerning Clara's brother David, the 
little boy in the Third Reader class when Frank 
taught at Harlan," who was now in the express 
business and going to be married. They told 
how "as I sit in my room at the desk where 
you have often sat, I look up to the wall where 
hang the pictures of my absent girls," and they 
brought to Frances, far away in Russia or 
Palestine, the knowledge of her mother's prayers . 

152 



Europe 

They gave her an intimate -sense of belonging to 
one corner of the world, and a comfortable know- 
ledge that whatever might befall her, she could 
always turn to her home for help and sympathy. 

All the incidents of arrival were delightful 
for these returned exiles. The sight of the pilot 
boat, the tedious Customs, the very noise and 
confusion of the New York streets filled them 
with joy : and as they got nearer home Frank's 
happiness increased by leaps and bounds, and 
at last she reached Evanston itself, and Rest 
Cottage, and Mother. 

There for a time she quietly stayed, thinking 
over what she had learnt, writing for the papers, 
and preparing, with great diffidence, the lectures 
she had determined to give on Europe and the 
''woman question." It was at this time that she 
gave up her Journal, the faithful companion of 
her daily life. The last entry is on September 
28, 1870, written in a bold and elaborate hand. 

/"This is my 31 birthday. I have not lived so 
long for nothing. Many a * school ' has done its work 
upon me and been ' graduated ' from. Among others 
that sentimental friend my Journal has this day been 
shaken hands with in a long adieu, and I here record 
my purpose to write no more wishy-washy pages of 
personal reminiscence. 

" Vale ! (fixitf 

153 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NORTH-WESTERN UNIVERSITY 

Up to this time Miss Willard had shown no 
outward sign of being in any way a remarkable 
woman. She had lived the ordinary life of a 
Western schoolmistress, had written for the papers, 
had published one book, and travelled in Europe. 
She had done these things, it is true, with a 
certain originality, and her thoughts had always 
been her own, but as yet this was all. Almost 
immediately after she came home, however, she 
rose, as it seemed, as high as she could hope to 
rise. She reached the top of her profession, 
and became the first woman president of a 
college in the United States, when she was 
only thirty-one years old. But even this is 
not a sufficient proof of her greatness. There 
have been many women presidents of colleges 
since 1871, and many as successful as she was, 
but there has never been another leader like 
her. It was, however, a very important part 

i54 



The North- Western University 

of her career, and a preparation for her real 
work, and the first four years that followed her 
return from Europe were perhaps the most 
dramatic of her whole life. They began, how- 
ever, quietly enough, with gardening and house- 
work and the tacking down of carpets. 

Mrs. Willard, Kate Jackson, and Frank settled 
down at Rest Cottage in September, and decided 
to keep no servant because they wanted to be 
alone. They talked their travels over and over 
again, and Frances, true to the resolutions she 
had made in Paris, prepared a series of lectures 
on the women of different countries, which she 
gave before the Women's Foreign Missionary 
Society. The fame of these " talks " spread 
through the brotherly Methodist world of 
Chicago, and presently there came an unknown 
caller asking Frank to speak in the Centenary 
Church, and promising her money and an 
audience. She accepted at once, and a, few 
weeks later found herself introduced by her old 
friend Fowler, and speaking in his church for 
an hour and a half on the subject of " The 
New Chivalry." The new chivalry, of course, 
meant women's rights, but, in spite of the unpopu- 
larity of the subject, the lecture had a great suc- 
cess. " The largest part of my life," she said, in 

i55 



Frances Willard 

introducing the difficult controversial part of her 
speech, "has been spent in the service of girls. 
I claim to have coaxed and reproved, caressed 
and scolded, corrected the compositions and 
read the love-letters of more girls than almost 
any other schoolma'am in the North-West. . . . 
Let me, then, invoke your patience while to- 
gether we review the argument from real life 
which has placed me on the affirmative side of 
the tremendous 'woman question.'" 

She would probably have gone on making 
speeches, and taken up the profession of a public 
lecturer — at that time a very profitable one in 
America — had not what seemed then a wider 
opportunity come her way. 

Her mother describes the simple, unexpected 
fashion in which it happened : — 

" One day when F. was busy nailing down the stair 
carpet, Mrs. Kidder, whose husband was then leading 
professor in the Theological Seminary, came from her 
home across the street, and taking a seat on the stairs, 
said : ' Frank, I am amazed at you. Let some one else 
tack down carpets, and do you take charge of the new 
college.' ' Very well/ answered Frank, ' I shall be glad to 
do so. I was only waiting to be asked.' " 

In consequence she became, in February, 
1 87 1, President of the Evanston College for 
Ladies . But the College did not yet exist ; it 

156 



The North- Western University 

was, as she said, all dreams and no dollars, and 
her first business was to build the college over 
which she was to preside, and to collect the 
students she was to teach. 

The North -Western Female College, at which 
she had herself been taught, had been until this 
time the private enterprise of Professor William 
P. Jones. It had been in no way connected 
with the University, and was in reality hardly 
more than a boarding-school. In this year a 
committee of Evanston ladies decided to start 
another women's college, which should have a 
woman president and women on its board of 
trustees, and which should, if possible, be con- 
nected with the University. At the same time 
Dr. E. O. Haven was chosen president of this, 
a post which he accepted only on condition that 
women should be freely admitted to all the 
University privileges. The way then grew clear, 
and after many legal and financial arrangements, 
it was decided that Professor Jones's college and 
the new college should unite to form a women's 
branch of the University, whose students should 
be under the direction of their own president 
and staff, but free to attend all lectures. The 
women's college was also to provide special 
courses, such as music and home industries, which 

i57 



Frances Willard 

the girls could attend if they chose, and any 
degrees given by the college were to be ratified 
by the University. 

All this took much planning, and Frank was 
very busy that spring, inventing a college after 
her own heart. Dr. Haven helped her in every- 
thing, consulted her, advised her, and then left 
her perfectly free, and finally they drew up their 
scheme for co-education and prepared to put 
it to the test. 

But it was not only schemes for her college 
that Frank had to 1 build ; the college itself needed 
building. She went about a good deal, there- 
fore, making public speeches on the education 
of women, begging for money, and she had the 
audacity to " pre-empt the Fourth of July in 
favour of the girls of the North-West." This 
meant that on that day the college campus 
became a large picnic -ground, to which came 
every one who wanted to help the fortunes of 
the college, to hear the speeches and give to 
the collections, and also, incidentally, to enjoy a 
celebration in which fireworks had no part. 

" The faculty " were successful in their plans, 
and in September, 1871, the college started, 
though not yet in its new buildings : the girls 
had come, the doors of the University were 

158 



The North- Western University 

open, and for a year Frank experimented as 
she liked with education. Dr. Haven furthered 
all her schemes, approving of them, and they 
all worked well. They sound very curious now, 
those schemes of the new principal, for they 
show an ideal of education quite different from 
that which has won academic sanction. The 
North-Western University itself had ideals very 
different from those that prevail in England. It 
aimed, as American education seems generally to 
have aimed, at imparting quantities of informa- 
tion upon many subjects. It did not encourage 
specialisation, but insisted that each student 
should know something of everything. It was 
a thoroughly democratic education, not only 
because the students were of all kinds, and were 
treated equally, but also in that the subjects they 
studied were of all kinds, and were likewise 
treated equally. But, strange though these 
ideals may seem to have been, from the point 
of view of learning and scholarship, those that 
Miss Willard proposed for her girls were even 
more strange. They depended chiefly upon 
morals and the building up of a good and 
Christian character, and they estimated neatness 
and manners subjects as academic as Greek or 
chemistry. 

i59 



Frances Willard 

The girls, according to her plans, were to be 
under a " responsible home government." They 
were to be guarded and yet trusted, and she 
hoped that they would love and confide in their 
teachers, and be guided by them in all the aspects 
of their development. One of the students wrote 
of her years afterwards as follows : — 

11 Her power over the girls who came under her 
influence was most extraordinary. But she never used 
her personal power of winning friends for the mere 
purpose of gaining the friends. She never seemed to do 
anything from policy, nor to think whether she was 
popular or not. She was always planning for our happi- 
ness and welfare, and would go to any amount of trouble 
to gratify us. Then she was always reasonable . . . and 
perfectly willing to see and acknowledge it if she herself 
were in the wrong. . . . She succeeded in inspiring her 
girls with a keen sense of moral responsibility and a high 
ideal of what they could become. ■ What are you going 
to be in the world ? ' and ' What are you going to do ? ' were 
her constantly recurring questions." 

Without the inspiration of Frances Willard's 
own personality, and the freshness of her inter- 
pretation of goody-goody things, all these 
schemes might seem rather unenlightened. But 
prizes for courtesy, rolls of honour, and self- 
governed students all became genuine and ex- 
citing under her vivid touch, and the girls upon 

160 



The North-Western University 

whom she tried her experiments responded 

eagerly, and longed to be what she wished them 

to be, and to learn what she wanted them to 

learn. No doubt there was great need for the 

motherly system she adopted. " The young 

ladies shall do as they please so long as they 

please to do right," she said ; but nevertheless 

she watched, and had to watch, very carefully 

over their first steps in the difficult paths of 

co-eduation. Every one was observing the 

experiment, and hiany people were shaking their 

heads. The mothers were anxious for their 

young daughters, the University boys doubtful 

of the advantage of sharing their privileges, the 

girls both thoughtless and self-conscious. The 

whole thing might easily have turned to failure 

and disappointment. But success lay in Frank's 

hands. She took the girls into her confidence, 

told them of all the doubts and difficulties that 

lay round them, and put them on their honour. 

They responded enthusiastically, and brought 

their own difficulties in return for her decision. 

Many points of etiquette had to be settled then 

for all succeeding generations. Were the girls 

to be allowed to join the literary and debating 

societies, for instance? and could the young men 

escort them home? Some said they should not 

161 m 



Frances Willard 

join the societies lest " some one of them might 
prevent a young man from having as frequent 
an opportunity to speak as he otherwise would 1 ." 
Others felt they might join, but must walk home 
unescorted. Frank and her girls talked all these 
questions over, and decided as best they could ; 
and the girls were loyal to the decisions. Praise 
was a great part of her system, and seems often 
to: have been deserved by these early students, 
and the year 1871 passed most successfully. It 
was the year, however, of the great Chicago 
fire, that for the time ruined and crippled the 
wealth of the North-West, and that stopped the 
new buildings and reduced the college to poverty. 
But this did not daunt Miss Willard, and with 
the splendid courage of the time she set about 
re -raising her fund, even; as Chicago itself was 
rebuilt, out of the ruins of what was destroyed. 
So long as there were peace and harmony with- 
in, and her girls were learning and growing into 
the good, capable women she dreamed they 
should be, no outside misfortune could dismay 
their principal. 

But the next year there came a change. Dr. 
Haven became secretary to the Board of Educa- 
tion of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New 

York, and Fowler took his place as president 

162 



The North- Western University 

of the University. Then followed two years of 
struggle and unhappiness for Miss Willard, and 
it is not difficult to see how they came about. 
The same trouble that had separated Frank 
and the Rev. Charlie Fowler when they were 
young and in love with each other came between 
them now, when they were both older and suc- 
cessful in life. If Fowler had been set in his 
ways as a young man, with how much more 
justification was he now dictatorial ! And if 
Frank had been open-minded and experimental 
then, and the years had only increased this ten- 
dency, now as dean of the women's college she 
felt she had the right to be open-minded and 
experimental in her own way and without inter- 
ference. They both meant to do their best for 
the University, but their ways were different, 
and the friction that was the result disappointed 
and discouraged them both. 

There is no doubt that the Rev. Charles H. 
Fowler was in many ways a remarkable man. 
His views were exceedingly progressive, and he 
had all the determination necessary to carry them 
out, but his temperament was stern and uncom- 
promising, and his methods high-handed. He 
came to the University with as great a desire 
to succeed in the co -educational experiment as 

163 



Frances Willard 

had Frances. His views were the same as hers, 
and, even as she did, he believed in the freedom 
of women. When she had gone to Lima he 
had written to her, " Have you not some brave 
possibility of work for woman suffrage with your 
pen? It is to be the question of your prime 
and mine." And at that time he had been more 
radical than she. But he was one of those 
reformers who go by rule. He was not ready 
to experiment, nor to follow the development 
of things. 

At this point in the progress of her schemes 
Miss Willard felt that continuity was essential. 
She hoped that the plan that had worked so 
well in the first year might be continued — namely, 
that the girls should be under the entire control 
of the Women's College, and under the super- 
vision of its faculty. This meant that they would 
obey the regulations drawn up by her, without 
regard to what changes and regulations might 
or might not be imposed on the boys. But 
Fowler's plan was different. Equality was their 
ultimate aim, and therefore the girls should at 
once be placed on exactly the same footing as 
the boys, and so long as their work was up to 
the University standard, the University should 
pay attention to nothing else. Thus if any girl 

164 



The North- Western University- 
did not wish to take lessons in penmanship — one 
of the regulations of the Women's College — she 
need not do so : and if she did not wish to 
spend twenty minutes by herself daily she need 
not do this either, and still she could be " in good 
standing " in the University. With this divided 
authority things at once went wrong, and after 
much trouble, the Women's College was again 
changed, and became actually a part of the 
University, under the same faculty and board 
of trustees. Frank was made dean and Pro- 
fessor of ^Esthetics in the University at a salary 
of $2,400, and Fowler's plan was given a trial. 
All the regulations were taken away, and the 
whole tone was changed, as Frank sadly felt. 
The girls for the most part stood by her, for 
they loved her, and Fowler saw the strange sight 
of " a college full of girls crying for rules like 
a housekeeper for sapolio," and a college full 
of boys taking the opposite side and clamouring 
for equal rights for all ! 

With such an unnatural state of things it is 
no wonder that the plan did not work. The 
divided authority was not the only difficulty she 
had to face. Fowler was president of the 
University, and had won in the contest between 
his methods and hers, and he was now in a 

165 



Frances Willard 

position to push his victory home. This he did 
not hesitate to do, and in a hundred small ways 
Miss Willard now found herself thwarted. She 
had had prayers in the mornings until now, and 
talked to the girls of the ideals of life. Now 
this task was taken out of her hands, and she 
had to sit by in silence. Trouble after trouble 
of this sort arose, and Frank, unable to settle 
them in her own way, felt a growing sense of 
futility and of wasted effort. " The world is 
wide," she felt, " and I will not waste my life 
in friction when it could be turned into momen- 
tum." She therefore gave up her position as 
dean and severed her connection with the 
University. 

But this was no easy thing to do. The position 
was one for which all her previous work had 
fitted her, in which she knew she could have 
been successful. It was almost an ideal position 
for her, and meant an assured income for life, 
with work she loved and her mother and friends 
near at hand. Without it she had no money and 
no prospect but to go back to dreary little schools 
again. She herself described this decision as 
" the greatest sacrifice my life has ever known 
or can know " ; and yet, once clearly seen to be 
right, she carried it through without hesitation. 

1 66 



The North-Western University 

Her last " faculty meeting " was on June 1 6, 
1874. She had dreaded the ordeal. She 
had told very few of her intention, but gave 
in her resignation and then turned away to 
her own room to bear all the bitterness of 
it. It was the day of the President's recep- 
tion, and as she sat in her room she heard all 
the people coming and going ; night came and 
she saw the lights and heard the music and the 
voices of the guests, and an intolerable sense 
of injustice came to her. She had tried so hard, 
and meant so well ! And she had succeeded so 
well too, until Fowler had come and changed 
everything. And there he was, triumphant and 
secure, receiving his guests within a few steps 
of where she sat in her misery. The college 
had been so dear to her ; it had seemed her 
life work ; she had built it up, brick by brick, 
and had loved it and watched over its develop- 
ment. She had loved the girls, and her col- 
leagues who had stood by her, and it seemed as 
if she could not let it all go. Now she must go 
back to uncertainty ; she must leave her mother 
again, and leave Evanston, and break off her 
career just when it seemed at the height of 
success. The agony of these thoughts set her 

crying and sobbing, as she lay there within sight 

167 



Frances Willard 

of the president's house, and the cries and 
lamentations she could not control could be heard 
all through the college. For a time she felt that 
the contrast was too bitter and the sacrifice 
too great. Her companions, alarmed by the 
violence of the grief that would not die down, 
went, in the early grey of the morning, to fetch 
Mrs. Willard, who knew that " her own home 
and her own folks " were what Frank needed : 
but before her mother reached her, resignation 
had come, and she had said " The Lord alone 
shall lead me, and the world is wide." But 
it had been a night of anguish, and had taught 
her much about human suffering and dis- 
appointment. 

Her resignation made, of course, a great 
sensation in Evanston. Many people took her 
side, and felt that she had been badly treated : 
but she herself would not think so. In that first 
night of bitterness she faced the thought, and 
conquered it, and from that time she judged 
her own case with a fairness and a generosity 
that are almost too wonderful to be believed. 
It does not seem as if there could have been a 
human person who would not have resented what 
she had been forced to go through, or who 

would not at least have clung to the comforting 

1 68 



The North-Western University 

theory that she had been in the right. But Miss 
•Willard did neither of these things, and of all 
the admirable deeds of her life, this is the 
greatest. She not only forgave Fowler, freely 
and completely, but she went back to ask his 
pardon ; and toot only this, but when she 
came to think his theories right, she published 
her changed opinions. It needed courage to 
do these things, and simplicity of mind, and 
also a love of truth and great humility of soul, 
and these things were part of Frances Willard's 
nature . 

Forgiveness came first. A few months after 
her resignation she attended a Bible Reading 
in Chicago which led her to think she ought 
not to live in a state of enmity with Fowler. 
She told her difficulties to the preacher and 
asked his advice — and then took it ! 

" There is but one thing to do, my friend," he 
told her. " Take the morning train for Evanston 
and see each and all between whom and your- 
self there is the faintest cloud, and without ask- 
ing them to make any acknowledgment what- 
ever, freely pour out in their ears your own 
acknowledgment, with the assurance of your 
affectionate goodwill." This she did the next 
day ; she went to the University, where Fowler 

169 



Frances Willard 

had himself been conducting a revival service. 
When it Was over she waited in the dark chapel 
until he came out of the vestry, and then she 
went up to him and asked his pardon for all 
that had been her fault in their difficulties and 
disagreements. Fowler, unchanged from the 
days when he put his comments in her Journal, 
was touched and moved. " To one who comes 
as magnanimously as you have done I surely 
cannot say less than that I beg your pardon," 
was his answer, and from that day they were on 
friendly terms again. 

" Nor do I know," she wrote, " nor ever mean 
to know in this or any world, a reason why any 
human being should hesitate to speak to me 
with cordiality and kindness, or why any middle 
wall of partition should exist between my spirit 
and any other human spirit that God has made." 

But, after all, Fowler had been in the right : 
that is perhaps the strangest part of the whole 
episode. His views had been broader and 
wider, and they were the views that have pre- 
vailed : and Miss Willard, because she was truth- 
ful-minded, found it out. Fifteen years later, 
when she wrote her Autobiography, she acknow- 
ledged it. She had come to believe that the 

boys and the girls in a co -educational college, 

170 



The North-Western University 

as in the world, should be treated equally — but 
she added, that though they should be all on 
the same plane, this should be done by lifting 
the plane on which the boys stood. And from 
this turning-point in her career she went out 
to " lift the plane on which the boys stood," 
for it was in the next winter that she began her 
temperance work. 



171 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CRUSADE AND THE BEGINNING OF 
TEMPERANCE WORK 

Miss Willard resigned in June, 1874, when 

she was nearly thirty-five years old. It then 

seemed as if she was giving up her career and 

throwing away her success ; but the truth was 

that she had not as yet discovered her career, 

nor imagined the success she was to have. It 

was not long, however, before she found her 

work, and when once she had found it, she clung 

to it without wavering. She recognised it as 

her life work, her true vocation, and it brought 

her the secret of happiness. 

The Willards had always been temperance 

people. Josiah Willard had joined the Wash- 

ingtonian Temperance Society as early as 1835, 

and had told Frances as a child about Neal 

Dow and the prohibition laws in Maine. She 

had grown up in a family and in a community 

in which total abstinence was taken for granted. 

172 



The Crusade 

Evanston was a prohibition village from the 
first (made so by the Charter of the University), 
and until she went to Europe Frances had never 
sat at a table on which there were wine-glasses. 
All this had made the idea of total abstinence 
familiar, but slightly dull. Of course it was 
wicked to drink, she felt, but the question was 
not one over which to grow enthusiastic, and it 
was not until the Crusade came to Chicago that 
she felt any " call " to the work. 
< The Women's Christian Temperance Crusade 
was one of the most remarkable events in the 
surprising history of American politics. It was 
entirely unexpected, and came sweeping over the 
middle States with the violence of a prairie fire, 
and, like a fire, it burnt away the old order of 
things, and made room for a new order to grow. 
It was, in many respects, a pathetic and even a 
ridiculous Crusade. The women who joined in 
it were so ignorant, and so sheltered, and they 
came out with such simple-minded fervour. 
But it was undoubtedly a most important moral 
movement, though it is sometimes hard to 
remember this serious value in the face of the 
crude scriptural simplicity of its actors. 

It began almost by accident. Dr. Dio Lewis, 
a travelling lecturer from Boston, spoke in the 

i73 



Frances Willard 

little town of Hillsboro', Ohio, on December 22, 
1873, on the subject of "Our Girls." Being 
snowbound, he was forced to spend another 
night there, and was persuaded to lecture on 
Temperance. In this lecture he suggested that 
the women in the town should go to the saloon- 
keepers and beg them not to sell " spirituous 
liquors." Something in the audience, or in the 
earnestness of the lecturer, made it all seem real 
and possible, so that when he called for volun- 
teers, most of the women present rose to their 
feet. From that moment nothing could have 
stopped them. Timid ladies, who had never 
thought of speaking in public, rose up and prayed 
aloud. White-haired women led the bands out 
into the streets, and the wives of all the " promi- 
nent citizens " followed them. All kinds of 
women joined the Crusade ; wives and mothers 
of drunkards came sobbing to the meetings, 
school teachers, foreigners, servants, grand- 
mothers, who said they were "of no use except 
to go along and cry," rich and poor, old and 
young, all marched out together singing, " Give 
to the winds our fears," and going boldly into 
the worst places, until the town seemed to be 
" given over into the hands of God and the 
women." 

174 



The Crusade 

Thus the women of Hillsboro' went out in 
their simplicity to persuade the saloon-keepers 
"in a spirit of Christian love, and for the sake 
of humanity, and their own souis' sake, to quit 
the hateful soul-destroying business " ; and 
thus the saloon-keepers, in their surprise, were 
persuaded. One after another they signed the 
pledge and closed their " stores," and poured 
their " poison " into the gutter, until within a 
week there was no more drink sold openly in 
the whole town. Encouraged by this remark- 
able success, the women of all the towns round 
about began to follow their example, and the 
revival spread in every direction until " saloon- 
keepers had been prayed out of town after town." 
Temperance became, throughout the western and . 
middle western States, a familiar subject of dis- 
cussion, and the " Whisky Power " began to be 
frightened. Ohio and Illinois seemed to be 
" going dry." Pennsylvania and even New York 
were swept by the revival, and everywhere, from 
Maine to Oregon, the women began to work. 
Day after day they went out, tramping from 
saloon to saloon. Often they were treated 
politely, often they were shut out and abused ; 
in the big towns they were mobbed in the 
streets and sometimes imprisoned. But whatever 

i75 



Frances Willard 

happened they " forgot everything but God," and 
went steadily on with their work. 

They sang their Crusade hymns to the John 
Brown battle tunes, and began for the first time 
to learn something of the depravity and wicked- 
ness of the cities in which they lived. And it 
was this learning, and not the uncertain con- 
versions they effected, that made the Crusade 
an important moral movement. Its value was 
not that they drove out drink and " pointed 
sinners to Jesus," for the drink came back in 
a few months, and the sinners forgot they were 
saved ; but the value was this, that the women 
remembered the lessons of the Crusade, and 
taught them to their daughters. 

There is something very touching now in the 
thought of these ignorant, innocent, well-mean- 
ing women. They were so uncultivated, so 
unworldly ! Their credulity was almost as 
great as was their ignorance of history and 
political economy, and they seemed to combine 
bewildering faith in the impossible with hard 
common sense. They had intense religious fer- 
vour, and a grotesque sense of humour, and the 
result of it all makes a picture at which it is 
only too easy to laugh, and in laughing to miss 

the real significance of what happened. 

176 



The Crusade 

It must have been very strange to see the 
lines of women marching out from the churches 
into the snowy streets, singing their gentle hymns 
to warlike tunes ; and strange to watch them 
halt before the saloons and kneel on the pave- 
ment to weep and " pray for the soul of the 
proprietor, that he might see the error of his 
ways." And it must have been stranger still 
when these proprietors surrendered and rolled 
out their barrels into the streets to pour the 
" poison " into the gutter, confessing their sins 
with tears, while the Church bells rang, and the 
women wept for joy, and the roughs scooped 
up the rum-soaked snow, and cursed the " pray- 
ing women/' 

But to those who saw the Crusade there came 
no temptation to laugh nor even to wonder. The 
evil against which the women were so innocently 
singing and praying was, and is, too serious and 
too real. Moreover, in America at that date 
it did not seem by any means impossible that 
sin should be driven out of a city by a revival, 
and kept out of human nature by the grace of 
God, and it was in the hope of this that many 
thousands of the most intelligent women joined 
in the work. There came, of course, no radical 
change anywhere but in the women. But there 

177 n 



Frances Willard 

it was radical enough, and from this strange 
beginning has grown most of the organised phil- 
anthropic work of women in the United States. 
They learnt that work was needed, and, though 
they did not yet know how to do it, they came 
to see that such work did not lie outside their 
sphere ; and that was the greatest result ever 
left in a community by a few months of 
emotional revival. 

The Crusade had this same effect upon Miss 
Willard. It reached Chicago in March, 1874, 
while she was still dean of the Women's College. 
The women of the Churches were stirred to 
activity, and went in a procession to the Court- 
house, and on their way were met by a hostile 
mob and only just saved from attack. Frances 
read of all this in the morning papers, and was 
greatly roused. She came out at once for 
11 everybody's war," and longed to be able to 
join in it thoroughly. She went in to Chicago 
to see what she could do, and spoke at three 
or four of the fervent meetings held there ; but 
she was too busy to do much, with her lecturing 
and her difficulties. ' To serve such a cause 
would be utterly thrilling," she wrote at that 
time, " if only I had more time, if I were more 

free." Her interest did not die down, however, 

178 



The Crusade 

because she could not join the Crusade. As 
she tells in her Autobiography, it then occurred 
to her, strange to say for the first time, that 
she could work for the good cause just where 
she was. " Thus," she says, " I first received 
the arrest of thought concerning which in a 
thousand different towns I have since tried to 
speak." 

Just where she was, therefore, Frances began 
her temperance work, and the students of that 
year went out to spread her first teachings far 
and wide. 

Three months later she had left her work and 
was free, and then at once she looked for an 
entrance into the temperance movement. She 
went East to see the leaders, and to Old Orchard 
Maine, where was held the first Gospel Temper- 
ance Camp Meeting in August, 1874. And 
then, in a Portland hotel, came what seemed 
a direct inspiration and leading to the work. 
Her friends were all advising her to accept some 
one of the many offers to teach that came to 
her ■ temperance work paid least, they told her, 
and she could not afford to be a philanthropist., 
This advice was worrying her a good deal, 
for perhaps it was true, she felt, and perhaps it 

was her duty to find some safe means of support 

179 



Frances Willard 

for her mother and herself. They had nothing 
but Rest Cottage, which Mrs. Willard owned, 
and Oliver was not in a position to help them. 
Frank was therefore seriously doubting whether 
it would be right for her to accept this strange 
new call that appealed to her so strongly. It 
was at this time of doubt that she opened the 
Bible lying upon the hotel bureau at this verse 
(Psa. xxxvii. 3): "Trust in the Lord and do 
good : so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily 
thou shalt be fed." 

This settled the question for her. She would 
" trust in the Lord and do good," and the Lord 
would provide. She therefore refused all the 
offers that came, and stayed on in the East, 
learning what she could about the movement 
and waiting quietly until the way should open 
before her. 

The Crusade was nearly over, and the move- 
ment that was growing up in its place was the 
" sober second thought." The women who had 
led it determined to form an association that 
should carry on permanently this work that so 
greatly needed doing, and during this summer 
they were taking, at Old Orchard and elsewhere, 
their first steps in organisation. A few local 
societies were formed, and a national society was 

180 



The Crusade 

planned, and in all this Miss Willard took her 
share. She talked with the leaders and planned 
in her own mind how the work might grow and 
develop, and prayed and waited until her special 
work should come. It came while she was in 
Canabridge, Mass. 

On the same day she received two letters, 
one offering her the head mistress-ship of a 
fashionable boarding-school at a salary of 
$2,400 and the other begging her to be president 
of the Chicago branch of the Women's Christian 
Temperance Union at no salary at all. 

if I was sitting at my sewing work to-day," 
this letter ran, " pondering the future of our 
young temperance association . . . and it has 
come to me, as I believe from the Lord, that 
you ought to be our president. We are a little 
band, without money or experience, but with 
strong faith." 

Here was the open door, and Frank entered 
it without hesitation, and set off at once for 
Chicago. On her way she stopped in Pittsburg, 
to visit her friends at the Female College, and it 
was then that she had her only experience of 
crusading. The excitement was nearly spent, 
but still lingered on in some of the larger towns, 

and Frances was anxious to see it if she could, 

181 



Frances Willard 

and to have her share, however small, in the 
great inspiration that it had been to the workers. 

They went out peacefully and without attract- 
ing much notice, found the saloon they sought, 
and knelt quietly on the pavement before it, 
praying ; then they were admitted, and knelt 
on the sanded floor, and Frank prayed aloud. 
It was all new to her, and the sights and smells 
of the place, the barrels and glasses, and the 
unwashed faces of the roughs, moved her 
strongly. The world took on a new light ; 
what few conventions and timidities she had had, 
and the fear of public opinion, all passed away 
for ever, and she rose from her knees in that 
public-house with a new realisation of what this 
work was to which she was called. Their visit 
had no particular effect, and the saloon did not 
close ; but Frances went on to Chicago with 
a new consecration and a greater faith to take 
up her life's work. 

Miss Willard's first years in Chicago read like 
a story of adventure. She flung herself into 
the work with all her energy, and she thought 
of nothing else. It was all very exciting, for 
it was all so new ; the whole of Chicago lay 
before her, almost untouched. Very few people 

cared for temperance, since the Crusade had 

182 



The Crusade 

made little headway in so large a town, and it 
was Frank's task to find the workers, plan the 
work, and develop and organise the whole thing. 
She brought to the task the same energy and 
inventiveness she had brought to the planning 
of her college, and she inspired her fellow- 
workers with the same enthusiasm her girls had 
felt. 

It was then that she first met Mrs. Matilda 
B. Carse, the woman who was afterwards to 
plan and urge the ambitious scheme of the 
Woman's Temple. Their schemes were small 
enough then, but they seemed very great, and 
were certainly ambitious. They dared to take 
a dingy little office, in which one or two women 
met to plan their campaigns ; they toiled up 
many flights of stairs to interview editors and 
printers, and they worked untiringly, and the 
Society soon began to grow and to flourish. 

All this while, however, Frank would take no 
money. She was determined to be led of God 
only, and to live by faith. All she had to live 
on was an occasional collection taken at some 
small meeting at which she spoke, which some- 
times came to as much as $7, and she was 
often too poor to take a street car, and too 
poor even to buy enough to eat. But she did 

183 



Frances Willard 

not mind these things, and her mother bravely 
tried the experiment with her. They would not 
tell Kate Jackson of their difficulties, lest she 
should insist on helping them. " I am just 
simply going to pray, to work, and to trust God," 
Frank said, and in this thought she was happy. 

It was perhaps the happiest time of all her 
life. The simplicity of her poverty, and the 
satisfaction of her trust in God, must have given 
her life real serenity. She was absorbed in the 
work, she believed in it with passionate enthu- 
siasm, and it was growing and succeeding ; she 
had left her troubles and difficulties behind her, 
and was now at last on her Master's business. 
And with all this there was the new understand- 
ing of humanity that her poverty brought her. 
Every day she saw more and more clearly what 
life was like for the people among whom she 
worked, and this knowledge brought to her, as 
it brought to St. Francis of Assisi, a great and 
abiding love. She really did not trouble when 
she was hungry ; she did not trouble when she 
was tired, for her spirit was free. And this 
experience, as she often said, was not only the 
happiest but by far the greatest of her life. 

But, of course, it could not last. This world 

is not meant for people who can completely dis- 

184 



The Crusade 

regard it, and Frances found that she must come 
back to ordinary life. In the first place she 
very naturally fell ill, and went back to Evanston 
to be with her mother. From her she learnt a 
lesson in common sense. 

1 You do not need a doctor/' her mother told 
her, " if you are going by faith. Now I want 
you to listen to me. I believe in faith as much 
as you do, but you have flown in the face of 
Providence. Those good women spoke to you 
about maintenance on the very day they chose 
you president. That was your heavenly Father's 
kind provision, and you turned away from it 
and dictated to Him the method of His care. 
. . . God isn't going to start loaves of bread 
flying down chimneys, nor set the fire going 
in my stove without fuel. I shall soon see the 
bottom of my flour-barrel and coal-bin. You 
are out at elbows, down at the heel, and down 
sick, too. Now write to those temperance ladies 
a plain statement of facts and tell them that 
you have made the discovery that God works 
by means, and they may help you if they like." 

This was all quite undeniable, and Frank 
accepted it. She wrote, that same night, and her 
fellow-workers cried over the letter in execu- 
tive committee ; and, of course, they sent her 

185 



Frances Willard 

money at once, and gave her a fixed salary, 
and then the experiment was over. But she 
came back reluctantly to a safe and secure life. 
While she had been without a cent in the world 
she had known that she owned Chicago— that 
she was free of it all. The world had nothing 
to give her and nothing to take away, and the 
understanding of this possibility changed every- 
thing for her. She had found for herself, and 
tried for herself, the Franciscan ideals, and they 
had given her a true spirit of love and a true 
freedom of soul. And also they had made her 
into a philanthropist because she loved mankind 
and not because she loved a theory. 

The work she did at this time was largely 
the personal work of a speaker and reformer. 
She had not yet begun organisation on a large 
scale, but she was learning what the work was 
that she was afterwards so successfully to help 
others to do, and trying by her own experiments 
what sort of meetings and prayers and plans 
were most effective for individual cases of 
drunkenness. The Women's Christian Temper- 
ance Union was only just beginning, and its 
first National Convention was held in the 
November of that year, 1874, at Cleveland, 

Ohio. To this Convention Miss Willard went 

186 



The Crusade 

as a delegate from Illinois, and there, as she 
met the other workers and joined in processions 
and prayer-meetings, she felt a great sense of 
exaltation. " I seemed to see the end from the 
beginning," she said, " and when one has done 
that nothing can discourage or daunt." 

It must indeed have been a remarkable 
gathering. The women who had led the 
Crusade were there, all filled with enthusiasm 
and the sense of union and consecration. They 
had never held Conventions before, and knew 
nothing of formalities and rules of procedure. 1 
They could not in those early days make 
speeches : they just got up and talked a little, 
and held each other's hands and prayed, and 
believed that their way of conducting business 
was the breath of a new dispensation. Mother 
Stewart was there, and Mrs. Judge Thompson, 
the leader of the first Hillsboro' band of 
Crusaders, Mrs. Judith Ellen Foster, Mrs. 
Lathrop, Mrs. Governor Wallace, and Mrs. 
Annie Wittenmeyer, the first president, and many 
others of the early leaders came. To these older 
women Frances was a revelation of the possi- 

1 Frances helped them out of a terrible difficulty when 
she suggested that " the way to resume " after a luncheon 
interval " is just to resume " ! 

i8 7 



Frances Willard 

bilities of all women. They saw in her the 
coming of their future success, and when it was 
over they all went back to their local work with 
the blessing of a hope greater than they had 
dared to expect. They had all come to share 
her feeling, that they could see the end from 
the beginning, and they were eager to advance. 
Miss Willard was made corresponding secre- 
tary to the National Society at this first meet- 
ing, and wrote for it a resolution full of the 
spirit of goodness in which they were all under- 
taking their work. 

" Recognising that our cause is, and will be, combated 
by mighty, determined, and relentless forces, we will, 
trusting in Him who is the Prince of Peace, meet 
argument with argument, misjudgment with patience, 
denunciations with kindness, and all our difficulties and 
dangers with prayer." 

This resolution they carried unanimously, and 
it is one very characteristic of their simplicity. 
It was what they really meant to do, and in the 
main what they did do, and the goodness and 
simplicity of it express the good and simple 
spirit in which the Women's Christian Temper- 
ance Union was organised. 

After the Convention Miss Willard came back 

188 




FRANCES WILLARD. 

Age 38. 



The Crusade 

to Chicago to go on with the local work. She 
was already beginning to find the truth of the 
text that she was so abundantly to verify in her 
later years, Luke xviii. 29, 30: "There is no 
man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, 
or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's 
sake, who shall not receive manifold more in 
this present time, and in the world to come life 
everlasting." 

In a little notebook, which she kept at this 
time, she recorded some of her impressions, and 
they show clearly how well satisfied she was 
with her life :— 

"Dec. 1874. — Came back to the city from my evening 
temperance meeting ; almost froze getting from Lake 
Shore depot to my office — did freeze indeed. No women 
in the streets, everything stark and dead. Found Mrs. 
F. J. B. and faithful Sister W. trying to help three poor 
fellows who had come in, learning their stories and try- 
ing to do them good. We have more cases, histories, 
crises, and calamitous distress revealed to us than could be 
told in an octavo. Verily we are in real work. How 
good it is to watch the men grow clean and shaved and 
brightened. . . . My Gospel talks are in demand to an 
extent that surprises me. ... If I were fit for it how 
this work would enthrall my heart as no other ever could. 
. . . Engagements crowd upon me for Temperance but 
still more for Evangelical talks. . . . 

" Our daily Gospel meetings in airless, sunless Lower 

189 



Frances Willard 

Farwell Hall grow constantly in interest ; the place is 
two-thirds full of men who never go to church, and who 
are deep in sin. . . . Signing the pledge and seeking the 
Lord behind the pledge are constant factors. 

" Didn't go to Conversazione on Oriental and Greek 
Thought. I cannot serve my intellect at the expense of 
my Master, and our church prayer-meeting comes at the 
same hour. . . . When Brother X. wrote me that offer to 
be editor of a New York temperance paper, it didn't stir 
my soul a bit, but this little Gospel meeting, where 
wicked men have wept and prayed and said they would 
see Jesus — it thrills me through and through ! 

" Went to hear Nathan Sheppard on George Eliot. 
Don't believe I'll ever attend another literary lecture. It 
was keen, brilliant, flinty as flint, cold as an icicle. 

" Dr. X. discourages me what she can in my work and 
says ' a cheaper woman would do it just as well.' Is it 
then cheap work to be God's instrument in delivering men 
from voluntary insanity ? to bring them back to them- 
selves ? 

" Going up Broadway one dingy morning, alone in an 
omnibus and with a long drive before me, I thought, as I 
observed the crowd of working-people coming along the 
streets, ' How shall I think of them ? They are an object- 
lesson set before me for an hour, what shall I learn ? ' . . . 
And then a voice from loftier regions said, 'Look into their 
faces with a prayer.' That changed all. The scene was 
now most holy, and as the crowd passed along . . . my 
heart lifted up in this one prayer, ' God, bless the crowd. 
Christ, save the crowd.' 

" For me, my hands are over-running full of Christian 
work, and that's enough." 

190 



CHAPTER VIII 

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE AND RECORD WORK 
IN BOSTON 

The summer of 1875 Frances spent at Ocean 
Grove, with Mrs. Wittenmeyer, the president, 
who then wrote the history of the Women's 
Temperance Crusade, and together they planned 
extensions of the work. During the next winter 
she worked in Chicago again, but began to speak 
in different parts of the country. These meet- 
ings were curiously experimental, and more like 
prayer -meetings than anything else. Frances 
was not yet an orator, though she had already 
wonderful enthusiasm and a charm that carried 
her audiences with her. She was still learning, 
and finding out her powers and her beliefs. The 
people who came to hear her were learning, 
too ; they were a little afraid of a woman 
speaker — there were still very few of them in 
those days— and they were a little afraid of the 
subject of temperance. But if they came to 
scoff they stayed to pray ; and if they came to 

191 



Frances Willard 

learn they were led, by Miss Willard's persuasive 
words, to stay to work and organise and lead. 
She told in later years a very amusing story of 
the spirit in which one of these new recruits 
joined the movement. 

" I had spoken before an afternoon audience in a village 
of Delaware. It was in my earlier work, and I probably 
did not make my points as clear as I ought, for an old 
lady, to whom the membership card was handed, took the 
proffered pencil and mused audibly as follows : ' She 
wants me to join this society, and I have no idea in the 
world what they intend to do. But I suppose it will be a 
good deal as it is when I take my lantern of a dark night 
to go to a prayer-meeting — I can see but one step ahead, 
and I take that, and when I have done so the lantern 
is there, and I am there, and we can just go on and take 
another.' So her name went down upon the card, and she 
handed it back, saying, still to herself, 'If the Lord has 
got any temperance work for me to do, He's going to give 
me light to do it by.' " 

It was while she was doing this work, speak- 
ing to very timid and conservative audiences, 
and surrounded by restraining and modifying 
influences, that she found the second of the three 
great convictions of her life. The first had led 
to her work for temperance, and the second 
seemed for a time as if itjwould destroy her use- 
fulness as a temperance worker. It came upon 

192 



Women's Suffrage 

her with overwhelming force while she was on 
a trip through Ohio that she must work for 
women's suffrage. 

She had always been a suffragist — had been 
born one, as she said, but it had not seemed her 
imperative duty to work for this part of the 
woman's movement until now. She had seen 
Lucy Stone, and had heard her speak, as a girl, 
and had met and made friends with Susan B. 
Anthony soon after her return from Europe. 
She had known Mrs. Livermore and others of 
the pioneer suffragists, and had admired them, 
but she had not felt it was her duty to be one 
of them herself. But suddenly this duty came 
upon her, while she knelt alone at prayer one 
Sunday morning, and it came with such force 
and clearness that she could not resist it. 
" While alone on my knees one Sabbath, in the 
capital of the Crusade State, as I lifted my heart 
to God, crying, ' What wouldst Thou have me 
to do ? ' there was borne in upon my mind, as I 
believe from loftier regions, this declaration, ' You 
are to speak for woman's ballot as a weapon 
of protection for her home.' Then, for the first 
and only time in my life, there flashed through 
my brain a complete line of arguments and illus- 
trations." She wrote at once to Mrs. Witten- 

193 o 



Frances Willard 

meyer, asking leave to speak before the next 
Convention on the " Home Protection Ballot," 
but this was refused her. Suffrage was too 
advanced and radical a thing, connected in those 
days with too much ridicule and scorn, a thing 
unwomanly and unscriptural, and to touch it was 
contamination. For a short time Frances waited, 
and was patient. But presently, as she said, 
" My soul had come to ' Woe is me if I pro- 
claim not this gospel ' " : the conviction must 
be uttered and the thing faced. 

She spoke her faith before the Women's 
Congress at Philadelphia, but her first stand 
within the Women's Christian Temperance Union 
was made at Dixon, Illinois, at a small State Con- 
vention in 1875. She was alone in her determina- 
tion to speak on the subject, and it was so great 
a thing that even she was frightened. Timidly 
she brought forward a suffrage resolution, and 
sat waiting in painful anxiety during the utter 
silence in which it was received. Some one 
sternly moved that it be laid on the table and 
another anxious pause followed : then un- 
expectedly they took it up, and the debate 
started. Frances rose with such an ache in her 
heart and her throat that she could hardly speak 

to tell them of this conviction that had come to 

194 



Women's Suffrage 

her from God. She asked the women of the 
prairies, if they did not speak out, who would, 
since the East was bound with custom and the 
West untouched with knowledge? She begged 
them to claim this power for the protection of 
their homes, and she moved them as she herself 
was moved, They carried her bold and 
dangerous resolution and dispersed to think of 
this dreadful step that they had taken. 

After this first attempt Frances knew that her 
way was clear. She saw that the time had come 
when the thing could be uttered boldly and the 
truth believed, and so she waited no longer. 
Welcome or not, the words must come, and at the 
national Convention at Newark, New Jersey, in 
1876, she brought forward her resolution again, 
and made her first really important suffrage 
speech. To make it at such a place she had 
to disregard the earnest and tearful pleading of 
her friends and to face the opposition of almost 
all her colleagues. Some of them believed in 
it, many of them did not, but all agreed as to 
the unwisdom of introducing so dangerous a 
question into their deliberations. But Frank was 
never one to be cautious, and she felt that the 
time had come. " Somebody's got to be shot 
at, and it might as well be me," she said, in 

i95 



Frances Willard 

opening her argument, and then she spoke out 
boldly. 

All round her her friends looked sadly sur- 
prised . They did not want to be convinced : 
they hated such radical things. Many of them 
were only just led up to the point of attending 
a meeting and doing a little quiet praying for a 
public movement : and here was this earnest 
speaker saying things with which they could not 
disagree, charming them with her way of putting 
these things, impressing them with her sincerity, 
and driving them unwillingly into the camp they 
hated and feared ! One of these women, quiet 
and grey -haired, sat silently listening all through 
the speech, and when it was over and the people 
were going away, she suddenly burst into bitter 
crying. With the spirit of friendliness that per- 
vaded the Conventions, Hannah Whitall Smith 
went up and put her arm round her to console 
her, and asked her to tell the trouble and be 
comforted. But the poor convert could not be 
comforted. " Frances Willard has just convinced 
me," she sobbed, " that I ought to want to vote, 
and I don't want to!" Nothing could help her. 
She was convinced, and could not escape it, and 
she didn't want it, and could not escape that, and 
so there was no comfort to be given her. 

196 



Women's Suffrage 

Another one, who had held aloof from suffragists 
through fears as to their orthodoxy, now felt 
it her duty to join them. She told of her 
struggle as follows : — 

" I asked God to gather up my prejudices as a bundle 
and lay them aside. They remained tangible and tough, 
but I laid them aside. ... It came after nights of waking 
and weeping, for I felt the dear Lord was preparing me 
for something, and He did not want me to be burdened 
with that bundle. Now, in Methodist parlance, ' my way 
grows brighter and brighter.' " 

It was the same way with most of the women. 

1 You might have been a leader," they whispered 

to Frances on the platform, " but now you'll be 

only a scout," Yet in a few years she was their 

leader, they had made women's suffrage part 

of their official programme, and her " arrest of 

thought " had come to them all. 

Sooner or later it must have come to them, 

even if Miss Willard had not led the way, for 

this belief is the natural consequence of any 

attempt on the part of women to put the world 

right ; but she led them to it in the early days, 

and hurried them on the way, and in this she 

did the suffrage cause a great service. She did 

this because she was fearless, and did not stop, 

to count the cost and tremble at the dangers, 

197 



Frances Willard 

because she was brave to face whatever came, 
and above all, because she was right. And the 
result of it was that she became their leader. At 
first it meant loss of friends and loss of power : 
for the social ostracism of a suffragist, the sus- 
picions that attached to her, and the flavour of 
wickedness that clung to her skirts were serious 
things in those days ; but in her case it did not 
last long, and in three years they had elected her 
president . 

The first winter after her suffrage speech she 
began to do more evangelical work. D wight 
L. Moody was at that time holding great revivals 
all over the United States, and was in Chicago in 
December. Miss Willard spoke at some of his 
meetings and attended them all, and was greatly 
impressed with his power and his gentleness. 
Then in January he asked her to work for him. 
Their business interview, as described by Miss 
Willard, was a curious one. 

" Brother Moody asked me to call at the Brevoot 
House. He stood on the rug in front of a blazing grate 
in his private parlour, and abruptly said to me, ' Good 
morning. What was that trouble you and Dr. Fowler 
had in the University at Evanston ? ' 

" I was not a little ' set back,' as the phrase is, but 
replied : ' Dr. Fowler has the will of a Napoleon, I have 
the will of a Queen Elizabeth ; when an irresistible force 
meets an immovable object something has to give way. 

198 



Revival Work 

" He said, ■ Humph,' and changed the theme. c Will 
you go with me to Boston and help in the women's 
meetings ? ' he asked. 

"'I think I should be glad to do so,. but would like to 
talk with my mother,' was my answer. 

" ■ What are your means of support ? ' was his next 
question. 

" ' I have none except as the Chicago Women's Christian 
Temperance Union pays my current expenses, and in 
leaving its work for yours I should have none at all,' I said. 

" ' Let's pray about it ! ' concluded Brother Moody, 
falling upon his knees." 

Mrs. Willard approved of the plan, advising 
Frances once again to enter every open door, and 
so it was settled. The temperance people agreed 
that she should go, and do from Boston what 
she could of their work, and find her place ready 
for her if she decided to return. For a few 
weeks, therefore, she studied the Bible, and then 
went to Boston for three very arduous months. 
She still carried on her temperance correspond- 
ence, and held, besides, a great many meetings 
in the suburbs in order to make money, and this 
doubling of her work was a very great strain 
upon her. Brother Moody put a stop to it, as 
she tells : — 

"One day as I was about to open my noon meeting 
in Berkeley Street Church, Mr. Moody came running up 

199 



Frances Willard 

the pulpit steps, for his own meeting was waiting, and 
said: ( I see by the papers that you're talking temperance 
all round the suburbs. Why do you do that? I want 
all there is of you for the Boston meeting.' 

11 ' It is because I haven't any money and must go out 
and earn some,' I replied. 

"'You don't mean that I've given you nothing?' he said, 
striking his forehead. 

" ' Of course you've given me nothing,' I replied with 
mildness. 

" ' Who paid your way from Chicago ? ' 

"'I did.' 

" ' Didn't those fellows,' naming some of his immediate 
friends, ' send you money for travelling expenses as I told 
them to?' 

" ' I guess they lorgot it.' 

" ' Well, I never heard the like ! ' And he was off like a 
shot. 

"That evening as I was going into my meeting he 
thrust a generous cheque into my hand, saying, ' Don't 
you go beating about in the suburbs any more.'" 



It was indeed time she stopped, for she was 
holding one huge prayer-meeting daily, besides 
a Bible class and an inquiry meeting, and she 
often spoke at Moody's meetings as well. 

In this evangelistic work she was very success- 
ful, and she loved it. She began to dream of a 
life spent in helping people in this way, and 
of the good she could do to all the causes she 

200 



Revival Work 

had at heart. Mr. Moody was a very broad- 
minded man in all matters but religion, and he 
encouraged her to preach temperance and 
suffrage as well as the Gospel at her meetings. 
She felt that her power of working for these 
things was enormously increased by her con- 
nection with him, for she knew that in this way 
she reached thousands of people who would come 
to no other kind of meeting. 

It was just the sort of work she loved best. 
The expressiveness of it, the lack of all reserves 
and barriers, exactly suited her sympathetic 
nature. She always tried to say all that was in 
her heart, and in the atmosphere of a revival 
meeting she found many to respond. Her own 
faith was so true and so broad that she drew 
people towards the religious comfort she held 
out to them. She had a wonderful power of 
drawing new meanings from familiar texts. 
Religion under her teaching came to be a thing 
for daily help and daily enjoyment, and her 
success as a revivalist was so marked that Moody 
wanted her to go on working with him. But 
this she could not do, for she found his views 
of a Christian's duty too narrow for her accept- 
ance. An incident occurred while she was in 

Boston which proved this to her. She was asked 

201 



Frances Willard 

to speak at a Temperance Convention presided 
over by Mrs. Mary A. Liveraiore, then president 
of the Massachusetts Women's Christian Temper- 
ance Union, and she accepted the invitation. 
But Moody held earnestly that she ought not to 
appear on the same platform with one who 
denied the divinity of Christ, as Mrs. Livermore 
did, and she deferred to his judgment, at the 
time, from a desire to go on with his work. But 
when the meetings were over, and she had gone 
back to Chicago, she thought the matter over 
again, and found she could not accept these 
views . 

" For myself I only knew that, liberal as he was towards 
me in all other things, tolerant of my ways and manners, 
generous in his views upon the woman question, devotedly 
conscientious and true, Brother Moody's Scripture 
interpretations concerning tolerance were too literal for 
me : the jacket was too strait, I could not wear it ! . . . 
The more I study the subject, the more I fail to see 
that it is for us to decide who shall work in this cause 
side by side with us, and who shall not. I cannot judge 
how the hearts of earnest, pure, prayerful women may 
appear in God's clear sight, nor just when their loyalty to 
Christ has reached the necessary degree." 

Feeling this, she gave up the work, though 
her friends again told her she had made the 

202 



Revival Work 

" mistake of a lifetime," and urged her to over- 
look this small difference of opinion. But that 
sort of compromise was one she never could 
make, for she felt sure that " nobody is half him- 
self who does not work in accordance with his 
highest convictions/' and so she turned her back 
upon this open door, and returned to the temper- 
ance work. 

It was while she was in Boston, working with 
Moody, that she first met Anna Gordon, who 
was to be her constant helper and companion 
in all her after-work, and without whose practical 
care she could not have travelled the many 
thousands of miles nor done the many thousands 
of things that lay before her. 

They first met at one of her noonday meetings, 
at which, unexpectedly, the organist had failed 
to appear. Frances, with the " confidence in 
folks " she always felt, turned to her audience 
and asked for a volunteer, and Miss Gordon 
responded. From that time they were friends, 
and when Frank went back to the West Miss 
Gordon had decided to devote her life to the 
temperance cause. 

She became Miss Willard's secretary, and in 
years that followed she travelled everywhere with 
her and shared her work and her troubles. She 

203 



Frances Willard 

lived with her in her rare days of rest at home, 
shared all her interests and pleasures, cared for 
her and nursed her, bought her clothes, ordered 
her meals, made her engagements, and planned 
her journeys. She also organised the "Loyal 
Temperance Legion," and was Miss Willard's 
most indefatigable helper in all her work. 

After she left Moody, Frances had a free year. 
She resigned her position as corresponding 
secretary to the National Association, refused 
to be nominated for president, and spent the 
winter of 1877 as a private worker. She under- 
took a course of speeches for a lecture bureau, 
but found that work too difficult and unsatis- 
factory. " To be exploited all over the country, 
with as little regard for your comfort as if you 
were a codfish or a keg of nails, with journeys 
at small hours to make the next engagement, 
with long waits at side stations and junction 
depots like no other earthly thing," and then at 
the end to find a " human snowbank of folks," 
coldly and critically waiting for their money's 
worth, was not the sort of work that seemed to 
her best worth doing. Then, too, she got into 
difficulties with her managers because she refused 
to take more than $25 for a lecture, and when 

this was known, they could not get their usual 

204 



Revival Work 

share of profits. " A philanthropist cannot afford 
to make money," she said, and she was deter- 
mined never to be rich. " Nobody shall ever 
bring that reproach upon me, no matter how 
else I fail." She therefore abandoned her 
lecturing, and went back toi quiet temperance 
work in Chicago. 

She kept her resolution never to be rich, and 
received from the Society no salary at all until 
1886, when they voted to give her $2,250 
a year. Later they tried to give her 
more, but Frances would only accept an 
increase of $1,250, saying that was enough 
for her needs . In the last years of her life some 
of her friends gave her money with which to 
travel and to rest, and the National Society raised 
a fund to give her on her fiftieth birthday. But 
Frances could not keep money. She gave it 
away instantly to people who were in trouble, 
or to the temperance work, and paid little atten- 
tion to her own needs. 

The next year, 1878, was spent in organising 
a great petition in Illinois, asking for local 
option and that women should be allowed to vote 
on this particular issue. The work was interest- 
ing, and even pleasant, though it had at that time 

no result, and Frances thoroughly enjoyed it. 

205 



Frances Willard 

" Rest Cottage was like a ragbag by reason 
of the petitions stacked everywhere. My dear 
old mother took turns with Anna Gordon 
ironing the Big Petition smooth as a shirtfront. 
I used to take my little tin dinner-pail, as of old 
in district school days, and go over to the 
Illinois State House every morning, some kind 
ladies being there with their sewing to stay with 
me, and we thus kept house for weeks." It 
really must have been great fun for them, with 
their " home-like devices " and their unwavering 
enthusiasm, thus to lay siege to politics, and 
they were upheld by the knowledge that their 
cause was advancing on all sides, and that none 
of their work was thrown away. 

In this year, 1878, Oliver Willard died. He 

was a genial and lovable man, and at this time 

very religious. For many years, however, he 

had been a source of great anxiety to his family, 

for he had left the ministry and lost his money 

and his health. But a year or two before he 

had pulled himself up, had taken the editorship 

of a Chicago paper, and had been once more a 

comfort to his mother and a support to his 

wife and children. And now, quite suddenly, 

he died. Frances was away in Michigan when 

the news reached her, and with the characteristic 

206 



Revival Work 

sharing of all she had, whether joy or sorrow, she 
went on to her meeting and told the people all 
about it, while they cried together, praying and 
talking of the heavenly life. They went on with 
her to the train, and had a sort of prayer-meeting 
on the platform. " They stood there with their 
sorrowful but kindly faces, those dear new friends 
in Christ Jesus, and sang ' Rescue the perishing, 
care for the dying,' until I went." 

When she reached Rest Cottage her mother 
met her on the steps. " He was the pride and 
darling of her life, and I had almost feared to 
see her sorrow. But her face was radiant, and 
she said, ' Praise Heaven with me. I've grown 
grey praying for my son, and now your brother 
Oliver is safe with God.' " 

It was in this spirit that Mrs. Willard met 
all the troubles of her life, and it was this that 
earned for her the title by which the temperance 
women loved to call her, " Saint Courageous." 

Oliver's widow, Frank's early friend Mary 
Bannister, then came with her four children to 
live in Evanston next door to Rest Cottage, and 
Frank in her many journeys now knew that she 
did not leave her mother alone. 

These journeys crowded upon her, and during 

the next ten years she travelled almost con- 

207 



Frances Willard 

tinually, spending hardly, three weeks in the 
year at home, for it was the next autumn, 1879, 
that she became president of the Women's 
Christian Temperance Union. Before that time 
she had a few months of a new work, an ex- 
perience of business life that was not pleasant. 
She and her sister-in-law, Mary B. Willard, 
took over the editorship of Oliver's paper, 
which was then on the verge of failure, 
and tried for some months to carry it to 
success. For a short time they tried " so 
to tell the world's story to-day that the world 
may be happier to-morrow." They would 
not take advertisements of spirituous liquors, 
they would not report things of which they dis- 
approved, and as the paper was already running 
at a loss, it is not strange that the venture soon 
ended in disaster. They then went back only 
too gladly to the work they knew, among the 
people they understood, and for the cause they 
loved the best. - 



208 



CHAPTER IX 

ORGANISATION AND PROHIBITION 

As soon as the Women's Christian Temperance 
Union emerged from the very early, days of 
religious revival there sprang up in it, as 
in all other societies, two opposing elements, 
the progressives and the conservatives. These 
two factions worked for a while very har- 
moniously together, for the progressives did 
not want to go far and the conservatives 
were still at the starting-point. But in 
Miss Willard the progressives soon found a 
leader, and one who was determined to go both 
fast and far, and her election was the triumph 
of that party. Ever since her suffrage speech 
in '76 she had been marked out in the Society 
as radical and enterprising, and all her ways 
confirmed this judgment. She could not touch 
a new subject without enthusiasm, nor hear of 
a new scheme without at once wanting to try it. 

As she said, " When an idea comes, I pull the 

209 p 



Frances Willard 

string of the mental shower-bath, and take the 
consequences/' though in the end she generally 
rejected proposals that were too wild. Her 
attitude of mind was so: stimulating that the 
women who' were dimly striving towards a pro- 
gressive policy felt that in her they would find 
a leader after their own heart. To' one of them 
this came with all the force of a religious con- 
viction, and though canvassing was held to be 
a most wicked interference with individual 
liberty, she could not refrain from doing all in 
her power to have Miss Willard elected. With 
the extraordinary directness of those days she 
placed herself at the entrance of the cloak-room, 
and there stood to tell every woman that passed 
in that she had been led of the Lord to tell them 
that Frank Willard was the right person for 
their leader ! This thorough method had its 
result, in spite of the horror of the conservatives, 
who felt that the means had been wrong, that 
the end was doubtful, and that the woman who 
had done this deed stood in great need of their 
charitable prayers. 

This election was, in reality, the salvation of 
the Society. It had slowly begun to grow 
into a stiff and stilted body of automatic workers, 
whose chief aim was uniformity, whose local 

210 




MRS. WILLARD. 



To face page 220. 



Organisation 

unions were held with too tight a hand, and 
whose business was done by the most official 
of committees. Had it gone on in this way 
it would have had a very different history ; but 
it was not long before Miss Willard completely 
changed its methods. 

No sooner had she come into power than she 
introduced her famous " Do Everything " policy, 
for, as she said, " Any amount of elbow-room 
is good for folks." 

In time this policy thoroughly justified its 
name, and from the very first it brought about 
a change in the whole spirit of the Society. 
Every member now was to do what she could, and 
it was all to be counted ; every imaginable kind 
of work could be undertaken, fr!om cooking to 
universal peace, and they were all to be part of 
the movement. Miss Willard had the wisdom to 
see that in this way she could enlist the greatest 
number of women in her temperance army. She 
knew that women were just starting to form 
organisations for this and that, and were begin- 
ning to find out what they could do, and she 
took advantage of this fact to form them into 
temperance workers, with their new> societies 
departments of the Women's Christian Tem- 
perance Union, and their new powers used for 

211 



Frances Willard 

this cause. In this way she laid the foundation 
of the marvellous development of her Society. 
She also reorganised the working machinery. 
She had all the qualities of a great general, as 
Susan B. Anthony said of her, for she never 
hesitated and was never discouraged by failure. 
She also possessed that essential quality of a 
general, true ability to choose her lieutenants, 
and upon this the success of her method of 
organisation depended. 

When she became President, the system of 
management by committees was in force, and 
at first she carried on the same plan. But one 
day, when she was appointing a committee for 
a certain piece of work, she named first Mrs. 
Hannah Whitall Smith. Before she could go 
any farther Mrs. Smith spoke from her seat in 
the hall : "If thee wants anything done, Frank, 
just put on two other women with me ; only 
let one of them be a permanent invalid and 
the other always out of town." This turned 
Miss Willard's attention Very forcibly to the sub- 
ject of organisation, and suggested to her the 
plan which she almost immediately adopted. It 
was a very simple plan, and one calculated to 
get things really accomplished. Each depart- 
ment of work was put under the direction of 

212 



Organisation 

one superintendent, who was held personally 
responsible for it, and who was free to use her 
own methods and choose her own helpers. In 
each State organisation the same plan was 
adopted, so that the national superintendent of 
every department had under her one super- 
intendent in each State, and in this way business 
was enormously simplified. Seeing how well 
this plan worked, Miss Willard came to the 
conclusion that "if Noah had appointed a com- 
mittee the Ark would still be on the stocks." 

But, of course, the success of such a method 
depended chiefly on the proper choosing of these 
superintendents, and it was in this choice that 
Frank's real genius for leadership showed itself. 
She not only chose good workers, but she made 
them. There was something about her so inspir- 
ing and so encouraging that even the dullest 
felt active in her presence, and she had a way 
of expecting from every one their very best 
work, which brought from them more than they 
had ever dreamed themselves capable of doing. 

She chose people very quickly, believing in 
them on the slightest indications, and then by 
her trust drawing from them what she had 
believed. She would put them in places for 
which they felt unfit, and, by assuring them of 

213 



Frances Willard 

her trust in them, she made them fit. She would 
hurry them on to positions more radical and 
advanced than they felt ready to take, but she 
was very seldom disappointed in her " faith in 
folks," and found them almost always ready to 
stay where she took them. One secret of this 
power was, of course, that she had herself no 
fear of the success of others. She sincerely 
rejoiced over every successful thing they did, 
even when she thought they did better than 
herself. She wrote of herself in her Auto- 
biography : — 

" Not to be jealous of others who come at rattling pace 
along the track ... is a difficult grace. I do not profess 
to have attained it . . . but I will own that, so far as I 
recall, I have never seen myself outdone without making 
myself secretly say to God, ' I thank Thee for this other 
one's beautiful gifts : may they grow and abundantly 
flourish ! '" 

But this is a modest statement of her charity, 
for no one ever gave praise more freely and 
generously than Frances Willard. 

" Help us always to be what in her best 
moments each of us wants to be " had been her 
constant prayer, and was now her daily en- 
deavour, so that, as they said of her, it was her 

office, not only to plan the work that should be 

214 



Organisation 

done, but to be the life and inspiration of the 
workers . 

Perhaps she thought too well of people ; but 
it was a plan that succeeded, and a plan that 
made every one love her. She had had, all her 
life, an extraordinary faculty for making friends ; 
from the days when she led the Ne'er-do-weels 
onwards, she had never been without five or six 
very intimate, dearest friends, who loved her, 
and to whom she was devoted, and though they 
changed, as her life changed, it was not so much 
that she lost her friendship for them as that 
the number of her intimates grew. She exer- 
cised a real fascination over the girls she taught, 
and over the women who worked under her, and, 
indeed, over almost every one with whom she 
came in contact, and the secret of this fascination 
was perhaps just this, that every one was at 
their best in her presence. 

Of course it had its drawbacks. It cannot 
but be difficult to have very many dearest friends, 
and to spend your life in a circle of people, all 
of whom adore you. Jealousy followed her, for 
it was inevitable that this leader, whom they all 
worshipped, should love some more than others, 
and choose them for her companions, leaving 
others out. But to a very wonderful extent she 

215 



Frances Willard 

had the power to make difficult situations easy, 
for she had that tact that comes from a truly 
simple-minded charity. 

To a very wonderful extent, too, she shared 
her life with every one, and gave her sympathy 
and her counsel and her friendship to all who 
wanted it ; and this not from self-seeking, or 
any love of popularity, but from her real interest 
in all the world. To so great an extent did she 
do this, indeed, that those who knew her best 
and loved her most would often remonstrate with 
her and beg her to hold back for herself, and 
for them, some little part of her time and her 
energy and her love. They felt that by her 
constant sharing of everything she had, she must 
be wasting some of her thoughts and interests 
upon unworthy objects, and they knew she was 
wrong in thinking every one as loving and open- 
hearted as herself. But she went on her way 
undisturbed, looking always for " the good 
angel " in every one, and trying " to give each 
other of our best." 

All through the years that followed, this per- 
sonal strain of an unceasing intimacy went with 
her. But to Miss Willard it was no strain : she 
had no wish to keep back anything of her per- 
sonality, no fear of other people, and no jealousy. 

216 



Organisation 

She was always willing to be interrupted, how- 
ever busy she might be, and the only things she 
ever wished to keep to herself were her ideas 
while they were taking shape. The minute she 
had them clear her one wish was to make them 
known, but while she was following out a train 
of thought she felt a slight desire to keep it 
uninterrupted ! But this was her only reserve, 
and with such an outspreading nature she was 
just the person to lead and to inspire those 
temperance women. They were all sentimen- 
talists, of course, and they needed a leader in 
whom sentiment was genuine, and who was not 
afraid to say what she felt. Miss Willard was 
not afraid of this any more than she was afraid 
of saying what she thought, and therefore they 
knew her and had confidence in her. She 
entered at once into direct relations with every 
one she met, and no one was ever shy in her 
presence. 

In her private life Miss Willard was as genial 
and charming as in her public life ; indeed, the 
two were very close together, and it is hard to 
see that there was any line between them. She 
was always good-tempered and cheerful, and the 
very best of company. She loved to talk of 
everything in heaven and earth, and especially 

217 



Frances Willard 

of religion. She loved to talk with religious 
people of all creeds, and to dwell on the things 
that lay behind their beliefs. When she met 
agnostics or atheists she would talk to them in 
the same way, drawing from them their ideals. 
There was no one who could resist her earnest- 
ness, nor the gentle confidence with which she 
would say, " Yes, honey, that is Christ, but you 
don't know it. All you call goodness and up- 
rightness and wisdom is to me Christ. " Her 
letters are full of this interest to the very end 

of her life. " Dearest H ," she wrote in 

1889, "I am sincerely desiring a higher and a 
holier life, and / shall have it. By God's grace 
you'll hardly know me when you come again — 
I shall so have let go of the earth and caught 
on to the heavens." But as her work increased 
she had less and less time for any but business 
conversations. " We shall have plenty of time 
to talk over all these things in heaven," she 
would say ; " here we are too ,busy." 

Her business conversations were no less 
delightful. In them she used all the daring and 
the wit that made her other talk so fascinating, 
and peals of laughter would come from her 
" den " whether she were working or not. This 
" den " is a room very characteristic of 

218 



Organisation 

Frances, and is still kept just as she left 
it. It is a low room lined with books, with 
windows looking over the garden ; her desk 
stands there, with flowers upon it, covered 
with piles of letters and papers and the photo- 
graphs of her friends. Here and there on the 
walls are hung the mottoes that express some 
part of her attitude towards life : " For we are 
saved by hope " ; " Nothing is inexorable but 
love " ; " For him who knows most, him loss 
of time most grieves '* ; " This is my busy day." 
The books are extraordinarily interesting. They 
form the curious miscellaneous library of a 
philanthropist who loved books and had no 
time to read them. There are endless records 
of reforms always obscure and now completely 
forgotten ; there are religious and devotional 
books of all kinds, textbooks, reference-books 
and histories standing side by side with poems 
sent her by unknown poets . Stray novels picked 
up here and there come next to the old books 
she had at Forest Home, and pirated American 
editions of the English classics, from which she 
had tried to learn " culture " in her college days. 
Besides these there are tales of exploration 
and adventure, a great many Lives of Lincoln 
who was one of her two great heroes, and all 

219 



Frances Willard 

the works and speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, 
who was the other. Some of these volumes are 
filled with her notes and comments. On their 
fly-leaves are jokes and anecdotes, scraps of 
family history, lists of the people who were with 
her when she read them, memoranda of dates 
and of speeches, and sometimes, occasionally, 
references to the books themselves. 

The whole of Rest Cottage is now filled with 
the signs of the love and admiration she won from 
her fellow-workers. The walls are covered with 
telegrams and testimonials from her thousands 
of friends and illuminated addresses of welcome 
or appreciation they gave her, and the tables 
are piled with albums of their photographs, and 
the place is a solid witness to the tremendous 
work she did. 

In the midst of all these memories it is 
pleasant to picture Frances and her mother as 
they lived in her rare days at home ; Frances, 
full of energy and good spirits, working hard 
herself, keeping every one else filled with 
hope, and spreading through the house her 
atmosphere of cheerfulness. One can almost 
see how she must have rocked in the rocking- 
chairs, sung hymns on the stairs, and laughed 
everywhere ; how she must have told pleasant 

220 



Organisation 

anecdotes of all the mementoes that were col- 
lecting round her, and how pleased she must 
have been because the women " wanted to be 
kind." She loved everything in her home, one 
feels, with an equal overflowing affection. 

Mrs. Willard moved quietly about, watching 
Frances, giving her, now and then, some of the 
sound wisdom that her daughter loved to hear, 
careful of dusting and arranging, but all the time 
with her mind detached from the housework 
and in a sort of distant seriousness. She would 
sit in Frank's " den," and listen a little to the 
business talks and the laughter, but with a 
serenity that nothing could disturb. 

Frances never seemed to tire of work, and 
never seemed to want a change of occupation. 
She neglected nothing, answered every letter 
and attended every engagement, and was able 
to do it because she never took a holiday. 
When at home she worked from half -past eight 
to six, taking only an hour for lunch and exer- 
cise in that time ; but unless she had a meeting, 
as she so frequently had, she did not work in 
the evening. ''It is better to wear out than to 
rust out," she would say. In the free evenings 
they would all gather in the " den," Frank and 
her mother, and Anna Gordon, and the friends 

221 



Frances Willard 

who were staying with them or living near, 
and they would talk and talk of life and work 
and hope. 

" I go like a bee," she wrote, " into the gar- 
dens of thought ; I love to listen to all the voices 
and to go buzzing round under the bonnets of 
the prettiest flowers and the most fragrant. It 
seems to me I get a lot of honey." But in all 
her talk she would never speak unkindly nor 
judge hastily. " Let something good be said," 
was one of the mottoes she hung upon her wall, 
and one she required all who came to see her to 
obey. 

On one occasion in the early days of her 
work three of fyer friends came to see Frances, 
and, being " greatly aroused over an act of grave 
injustice towards her, were freeing their minds 
about the offender." Miss Willard listened to 
them only for a short time. Then she fetched 
her Bible and opened at Psa. xvii. 3, " I am 
purposed that my mouth shall not transgress." 
" I'm going to sign off from speaking ill of 
people," she said, " and I want you to take 
this pledge with me." 

It was in this spirit that she met all tempta- 
tions to think evil, and she kept her pledge most 

loyally . 

222 



Organisation 

Her work grew very fast, and she soon felt also 
that she had not time for unkind thoughts. She 
put another notice on her desk, " This is my 
busy day," and found it was always true. But 
she did not have many days on which to 
see this notice, for the office of president, as 
she interpreted it, involved almost continual 
travel . 

Her business letters, like her business conver- 
sations, were full of jokes, and full, too, of the 
spirit of love and charity. She had to send, 
of course, thousands every year, writing them 
in trains or at her meetings, scrawling them all 
crooked on her knee, or dictating them as fast 
as she could go to her stenographer. But in 
each one there is the same spirit, the obvious 
seeking for complete harmony of work, and for 
personal sympathy between the workers. " It 
is easier to climb up taking hold of hands," she 
said. They read, some of them, almost more 
like love-letters than business commands, and 
yet they deal with all the minute affairs of a 
philanthropic organisation. Questions of send- 
ing money to some lonely missionary stranded 
in Tokio, of holding meetings on Neal Dow's 
birthday, of winning an important editor's per- 
mission to use his columns, of building a drink- 

223 



Frances Willard 

ing fountain or interviewing a senator, all came 
to Frances to be settled. 

Nothing was too small for her attention, 
nothing too unimportant to be praised. 

" Let me thank you for going so faithfully and 
intelligibly over my paragraphs : not an error 
do I find," she wrote to the compositors of the 
Union Signal; " you are well beloved by your 
elder sister." 

There were naturally many troubles and diffi- 
culties to worry her. Quarrels and misunder- 
standings constantly arose, and at such times 
Miss Willard's letters are full of an anxious 
effort to make peace. 

" I would begin very mildly," she would say, 
" though she has acted in a most unsisterly 
manner " ; and again : " Perhaps you also can 
pour on some oil ; she has a lovely and sensi- 
tive soul, and has had much sorrow." 

Or she would simply say that " we must show 
her some attention since we have cut her head 
off"! 

If she had to give advice to young self-con- 
fident workers, as, of course, she often did, it 
was so gently given, and so kindly, that it 
seemed more like praise. Her blame, too, was 

very sympathetically given, and she never made 

224 



Organisation 

a suggestion that even hinted at criticism with- 
out including her own experience. " Thousands 
of times in my life I have found that a quiet 
attitude of listening would be a quietus to some 
difficulty that was just ready to blaze up into 
a bonfire. ... If I were you I should get 
others to tell of their great works. ... I find 
that every one is quite willing to be drawn out 
in this respect. This is written because I am 
thinking much of you in these days, and I 
believe the suggestion will be of value." 

There is also, in her letters, an almost 
unparalleled slowness to take offence. She was, 
of course, accused of every possible extreme 
opinion, even to approval of lynching ! but she 
paid little attention to what was said of her. 
She was never in the least undignified, and never 
wavered from her principles, but like Lincoln, 
" with firmness in the right, as God gave her 
to see the right, she moved along her chosen 
path with malice toward none and charity for 
all." 

The following letter is typical of her quiet 
method of dealing with a very difficult subject. 
The lady to whom she wrote it had turned 
against her in the most unexpected way, and 
from being a friend had become a most bitter 

225 Q 



Frances Willard 

enemy. She had published broadcast untrue 
and very injurious statements about Miss 
Willard, and was doing a good deal of harm 
to the work. Frances, who had helped and 
befriended her in the past, and who was still 
to help her, with the quiet generosity that does 
not ask for thanks, wrote to her one of the 
gentlest and finest of protests :— 

" My dear X,— If I should reply to your letter in the 
same terms in which you wrote, you might be as deeply 
pained as I was by its reception, nor would it subserve 
any helpful end for me to do so. Last year you two dear 
ones thought I had deserted the cause of prohibitory 
law : this year you think I have been untrue to that of 
purity. Since you hold these views I am glad to be 
informed, but I wholly disavow any such purpose; and 
if, as I wrote when you attacked me on the subject of 
prohibition, my record does not protect me among my 
old friends, then I must wait until it does. 

"As to what you write and the terms you employ 
concerning L. H., I will not trust myself to enter on the 
subject at all. 

" I am so grieved for dear D. and sorry for you all in 
this trying time. 

" Believe me, with every good wish, 
" Your sister, 

"Frances E. Willard." 

Even to Miss Willard this calmness and 

generosity did not come without effort. She 

226 



Organisation 

felt unkindness very keenly, and was miserable 
at every lack of harmony. But she made it a 
rule of her life never to answer a letter or give 
an opinion upon a difficulty until she had brought 
herself to feel charitable and loving towards 
everybody concerned in it, and with a leader as 
wise and as generous as this the Society lost 
very little of its energy in friction. 

The first two years after her election were 
spent in " branching out." New lines of work 
were undertaken, and the new organisation was 
set on foot. Praying had been the only founda- 
tion for the work, according to the conservatives, 
but Frances knew they must both pray and pay, 
and the receipts began to increase in conse- 
quence. The Women's Temperance Publishing 
Association was founded, and the ambitious 
scheme of the Temple was started. Besides 
attending to these things Miss Willard journeyed 
to and fro founding new branches, encourag- 
ing the old ones, and spreading her belief 
everywhere, and she began at this time to have a 
perfectly enormous correspondence. In the year 
1 88 i she and Miss Gordon sent out ten thousand 
letters, and besides this she wrote many articles 
for the temperance papers, and made many 

hundreds of speeches. "What it would be to 

227 



Frances Willard 

have an idle hour," she said, " I find it hard to 
fancy." Starting from the year of her election, 
she averaged 365 meetings and many thousand 
miles of travel every year, but all this activity 
seemed only to add to her enjoyment of life. 

While this individual work was piling up 
around her, threatening to swamp all her energies 
and use up all her time, Miss Willard did not 
for one moment lose sight of the larger issues 
of the Society, nor of its political aspect. Indeed, 
she cared for this with a steady enthusiasm that 
taught largeness of outlook to her followers. 
Left to themselves, many of the women would 
have been quite content with their schemes for 
reforming individual drunkards, with their 
bazaars and conventions and prayers, and would 
not have bothered with the larger and more 
difficult issues. But Frances Willard had a 
great ideal for her Society. It was to work " for 
God and Home and Native Land," and was to 
be a great educational, moral, and political force 
in the country ; and it was to change the face 
of Government and the spirit of society. 
In trying to do this, she made many mistakes 
and had many failures ; but one thing she cer- 
tainly accomplished, more important than pro- 
hibition laws, more important than the change 

228 



Organisation 

of parties, and that was the training of her 
followers. Under her teaching they became 
public-spirited and learned to take their share 
in the difficult experiments of government, 
learned to look beyond their own homes, and to 
know their own responsibilities. But it took a 
long time to teach this, and many struggles, and 
in 1 88 i the work lay all before her. That year 
she made her first trip through the South, and that 
year she got her third great conviction, and both 
of these things were very important in the history 
of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. 

It was a very difficult time in which to 
organise a national society that should include 
both North and South. Up to this time no 
Northern speakers had gone below Mason and 
Dixon's line, and very few travellers of any sort 
save those adventurers who came to be known 
as " carpet-baggers." These men unscrupu- 
lously played upon the difficulties of reconstruc- 
tion, making out of them their fortunes, and 
adding enormously to the Southern hatred and 
distrust of the North. The political parties were 
still using the old catchwords to fan the old 
anger into flame, and the poverty and ruin in 
the Southern States left little time for quiet 

thought and reconciliation. The best men in 

229 



Frances Willard 

the South were dead : the leaders and the 
thinkers were all gone, and the women who were 
left could not but remember their sorrows and 
cling to the justice of their lost cause. Their 
children they brought up in the old traditions, 
thus fighting in their own way against the ever 
aggressive, ever tactless North. This state of 
things made it hard enough for any Northern 
lecturer to venture there. But Miss Willard's 
task was even more difficult, for the progressive 
experiments of the North were not welcomed, 
and, above all, the women's movements were 
regarded with suspicion. The advocates of 
women's rights had been abolitionists and 
Quakers, in the early days before the war, and 
that was enough for the Southern people. Wm. 
Lloyd Garrison had approved of these things, 
and Wm. Lloyd Garrison was Satan inadequately 
disguised ; abolition and female suffrage had 
gone hand in hand. Prohibition had started in 
Maine among the New Englanders, and that 
was reason enough for hostility. It is not sur- 
prising, therefore, that the Crusade did not cross 
the boundary line, and that no Southern State 
sent delegates to the temperance councils. The 
South, too, was full of conservatism. Things 
as they had been in the old days now seemed 

230 



Organisation 

almost perfection ; inevitably they looked back 
to their glory, instead of forward, and inevitably 
they clung to their old traditions and their good 
old ways. The women of the South loved these 
ideals all the more dearly because now they had 
to work and to struggle alone. They had to 
face their ruin, and they faced it bravely ; they 
had to keep the torch of their civilisation burn- 
ing, and they did it well, but it was hard to do ; 
and amid their privations and their sacrifices it 
is no wonder that they looked back on the 
chivalry and shelter of the old days, and loved 
the ideals that had been torn from them. It is 
no wonder, too, that they hated and resented 
all these new and upstart ways in which the 
North was disgracing and degrading its women. 
A woman speaking in public was a thing 
unknown, a woman speaking on temperance 
was a thing to be feared, and a Northern woman 
speaking on anything at all was a thing to be 
hated and condemned. And yet Miss Willard 
spent three months in the South in 1881, and 
met everywhere with the greatest encouragement 
and success. 

There were two reasons for this. The first 
of them lay in Miss Willard herself, and the 

secret she had of winning the sympathies of 

231 



Frances Willard 

her audiences ; and the second of them lay in 
the condition of the South, and the dangers of 
the negro problem it was facing. The newly- 
enfranchised coloured people had had for a time 
after the war a disastrous supremacy, and now, 
when the whites had struggled back to power, 
they formed a dangerous and uncertain popula- 
tion. In this state of affairs the drink, with 
which they were abundantly supplied, added 
such horrors to the problem that every one was 
beginning to realise the necessity for action. 
Prohibition had been unpopular as coming from 
the North, but even a Northern remedy was 
better than the evil that was among them ; and 
the time was ready for temperance work. 

Then Miss Willard came, with her gentle ways 
and her uncompromising words, with her friend- 
liness, her intelligence, her refreshing sense of 
humour, and her profound belief in human 
nature, and she was to the women of the South 
a revelation and a hope. Some of them, who 
later joined her work, have told of the wonderful 
impression she then made :— 

" The first time I heard her I lay awake all night for 
sheer gladness. It was such a wonderful revelation to 
me that a woman like Miss Willard could exist. I thanked 
God and took courage for humanity." 

232 



Prohibition 

Another lady said of her visit that "it was 
the first ray of hope that had come into our lives 
since the war." 

Tributes like these followed her wherever she 
went, and to this day they echo in Virginia and 
Louisiana and all the Confederate States. 

She had a great ovation wherever she went, 
and societies sprang up behind her, and not only 
sprang up then, under her influence, but grew 
and prospered, until to-day practically the whole 
South has " gone dry," and, as far as legislation 
can prevent it, the coloured and the white 
people do not complicate their difficulties with 
drink . 

The success of this first trip through the 
South set Miss Willard dreaming of a greater 
attempt, and with her to dream was to try. 
She began to dream of a new union of the 
North and South, one that should cut through 
lines of party and of sex, and unite all the 
Christians of the country in a war against 
sin. 

" Northern and Southern bayonets shall point 
the same way," she hopefully proclaimed ; the 
initials W.C.T.U. should stand for the words, 
" We come jto unite," and the North and 
the South should form reunited States in 

233 



Frances Willard 

which rum-selling and vice should have no- 
place. 

It was in thinking of this, and of how it might 
be accomplished, that Miss Willard found her 
great political conviction — the conviction that this 
dream might be realised in the triumph of pro- 
hibition, and it was then that she " thought 
through to the conclusion of her personal duty 
to take sides for the Prohibition party." This 
conclusion was strengthened at the National 
Convention of the Prohibitionists at Saratoga 
which she attended in the summer of 1881, and 
was publicly declared to her own Society in the 
autumn of the same year. 

It was a very important decision, and one 
which cost her " much goodwill and many 
votes," besides a great deal of careful thought. 
The Third Party movement was very unpopular, 
as third party movements always must be. Pro- 
hibitionists were very few and very much laughed 
at. She herself was a thoroughly staunch 
Republican, and so were almost all the women 
in her Society, and, indeed, all the Northern 
people she knew. It was hardly respectable not 
to be a Republican in the West. The traditions 
of that party had lingered on from the days 
when it really was the " party of moral ideas," 

234 



Prohibition 

and loyalty to it was a matter of course. Lincoln 
had been their hero, passionately loved, and at 
his death, as Garrison said, " the heavens seemed 
dark. Nothing was left but God and His 
immutable Providence and His decrees." If his 
party had fallen from its high traditions, there 
was all the more need to cling to it now, and 
bring it back to the old faithfulness, so that to 
desert it seemed almost a crime. But it was a 
crime Miss Willard boldly and joyfully com- 
mitted, and a crime which she led many 
thousands of other people to commit with her. 
11 I am a Prohibitionist," she said, " by educa- 
tion, by observation, by study, by conviction, 
by experience, by hope, faith, and charity. 
When we know these things, happy are we if 
we do them." 

The Prohibition party had run its first candi- 
date for President in 1872. Ever since 1835 
there had been agitations, chiefly in New Eng- 
land States, for the prohibition of the sale of 
intoxicating liquors within the State. In 1838 
a law had been passed in Massachusetts for- 
bidding the sale of liquor in quantities less than 
1 5 gallons, and in 1 8 5 1 the State of Maine had 
passed, chiefly through the work of Neal Dow, 
an entirely prohibitory law. But such laws 

235 



Frances Willard 

within single States can only be partially suc- 
cessful, and the reformers hoped, and still hope, 
for national prohibition. In 1869, therefore, 
despairing at last of the existing political parties, 
they had made their own party organisation. 
They had adopted their first platform and run 
their first candidates at the election of 1872. 
Year after year they had persevered, until now, 
in 1 88 1, when Miss Willard joined them, they 
had quite an important following, not yet enough 
to gain any of the electoral votes cast by the 
States, but enough seriously to disturb the 
balance of parties. 

Frances Willard joined the Prohibitionists in 
1 88 1 in the hope 'that the " colour line could be 
broken by ballots," that " Mason and Dixon's 
line could be wiped out of the hearts of men," 
and that the national Government might be 
forced to attend to woman's questions. She 
went on the executive of the party organisation 
and tried her best to have it called the Home 
Protection party, and for the rest of her life 
watched its fortunes and helped them where she 
could. 

The next three years she spent in urging the 

Women's Christian Temperance Union to follow 

her example. She came before them in 1881, 

236 



Prohibition 

confessing the opinions she held : " Here I 
stand. I can do no other. God help me. 
Amen." But they did not stand with her, and 
it was not until the election year, 1884, that 
she succeeded in inducing them really to take 
to politics. 



237 



CHAPTER X 

POLITICS AND THE WORLD'S WORK 

" We are not here to float the float of faith, but 
to fight the fight." This iwas one of Miss 
Willard's firm beliefs, and acting upon it, she 
made her Society astonishingly powerful by 1884. 
11 God's law of growth does not exempt the 
Women's Christian Temperance Union," she said, 
and she insisted upon more ! and still more kinds 
of work being undertaken. 

" I have named Miss Willard the ' Octopus,' ' 
Hannah Whitall Smith wrote of her, " because 
she is continually reaching out her great tentacles 
and dragging us all into her insatiable maw. 
... I never saw such a head for planning. 
I tell her I sometimes wish it was cut off — she 
does hustle a body about so from one thing to 
another ! But, after all, that is the way she has 
made our Women's Christian Temperance Union 
the power it is. . . ." 

The work that the various branches of the 

238 



Politics 

Society did in these , years was very various. 
Sometimes it was done in simple communities 
where every one knew every one else, and all 
that was needed was prayer and argument and 
entertainments. Sometimes the chief task was 
among the temperance women themselves, to 
educate them in work, and to teach them how to 
unite. There was the unfortunate village in 
which, when a local branch was organised, 
" there wasn't a quarrel in the neighbourhood 
that was not represented on the board of 
officers," and many local unions were at first 
in this plight. But this was not always so. 
Sometimes their chief work was among the 
children, or in the Churches, or through the 
Press, and sometimes it lay in the Legislature, or 
amidst the excitement and confusion of elections. 
At these times the women worked their hardest. 
They came, all inexperienced, into these turmoils 
of dishonesty and double-dealing, and found it 
hard not to be discouraged by what they saw. 
They worked for constitutional amendments, for 
State prohibition, for local option, and for any 
and every kind of temperance measure. They 
collected petition after petition, and tried every 
means they could think of to influence the voters^, 
and the more they worked the more convinced 

239 



Frances Willard 

they became of their need for votes themselves. 
In times of stress they worked so hard that 
some of them literally could not keep awake at 
their own meetings ; sometimes they failed so 
repeatedly that for a time they lost heart ; but 
to them all, when they were tired or discouraged, 
a word or note from their " chieftain " brought 
hope. She was their great inspiration, and they 
were ready to follow where she led. 

In 1882 the National Society came out more 
strongly than ever for Women's Suffrage . Susan 
B. Anthony, the intrepid leader of the Suffrage 
societies, came to their Convention, and was 
" publicly kissed by an enthusiastic Quaker lady 
from the West." She was invited to address the 
Convention, and introduced by Miss Willard in 
words of strong approval. A prominent woman 
who was opposed to Miss Willard's re-election 
went among the delegates assuring them in the 
most solemn manner that she had insulted every 
one of them by introducing Miss Anthony on the 
platform, as she did not recognise God — a thing 
which was quite untrue. 'Well," replied an 
Indianapolis woman, " I don't know about that, 
but I do know that God has recognised her and 
her work for the last thirty years." 

As Miss Willard gently remarked, however, 

240 



Politics 

" all this daunted the conservatives, and a few 
of them withdrew." One can imagine their 
feelings and their horror. There was Miss 
Willard preaching politics, and politics of a most 
unorthodox kind, and Miss Anthony with her 
strong, unshakable purposes, Miss Anthony the 
heroine of a thousand gibes and the scorn of 
ten thousand fools ; and there was their precious 
praying Society taking up dress reform, and 
making its members pay subscriptions I it was 
no wonder that they withdrew. 

When they had gone the Women's Christian 
Temperance Union went on its way more vigor- 
ously than ever. 1883 was the year of the 
" Great Temperance Round-up," in which Miss 
Willard, with Anna Gordon, visited every State 
and territory, started societies in every one of 
them, spoke in every town of over 10,000 
inhabitants, and travelled over 30,000 miles. 

In the course of their travels they stayed with 
thousands of different people, and to them all 
Miss Willard became a friend . The experience of 
life she acquired in these years was enormous. 
Women would consult her and write to her upon 
every subject — upon getting a divorce, or leaving 
a drunken husband, or starting a school. They 
asked her for help of every kind ; sometimes 

241 R 



Frances Willard 

strangers would want her to write their speeches 
for them, or would send her their bills and ask 
her to pray over them and then pay them ! " The 
list of these things/' she said, " would reveal 
the mighty unrest of women's hearts." As she 
went about seeing this " mighty unrest," and 
hearing the troubles and difficulties of the women 
of her country, she became more and more 
certain of the need for many kinds of reform, 
and the more and more determined to make of 
herself " a woman whom the Lord could trust," 
that she might help this good work. 

The actual bodily fatigue of so much travelling 
was very great. ' We get lovely welcomes 
everywhere," she said, " but we are very tired." 
But in the train, as at home, she was always 
ready to talk to other people, if she could 
talk to them about her work, and she was ready, 
too, at junctions or sidings where they had to 
wait, to make impromptu speeches to the railway- 
men, and any one else who would come to 
hear. 

She would speak from the train, while a boy 
ran round the little town ringing a dinner-bell 
and shouting, " Lecture at depot, now, now, now ; 
Miss Somebody, of Illinois, now. Everybody 
invited. Lecture at depot ! " All this was hard 

242 



Politics 

work, but neither Miss Willard nor Miss Gordon 
would spare themselves. 

No sooner had they finished this huge task 
than there came the first serious trouble within 
the Society, and it was the forerunner of a suc- 
cession of difficulties. It was, of course, 
impossible that so large a Society should work 
quite harmoniously in all its branches, even with 
the " elbow-room " Miss Willard allowed, and 
it was equally impossible that among all those 
women some should not be found to dispute her 
leadership and to quarrel with her adventurous 
ways. She got into trouble in particular when 
she began to attack party politics — that task- 
master whose bigotry in the present day seems 
to have taken the place of the religious intoler- 
ance of the past. 

There is no general interest in a detailed 
description of the quarrels and difficulties of a 
society of earnest and conscientious people. 
There are many paths for well-meant crooked 
dealings, and big issues very easily get lost in 
small ones and obscured with personalities. 
Any one who has had anything to do with public 
work will know only too well how easily mis- 
understandings arise, and how the subtleties of 
technical language can provoke impassioned 

243 



Frances Willard 

eloquence and bitter personal accusations. All 
this befell the Women's Christian Temperance 
Union, but to a surprisingly small extent. The 
vast majority of the women were almost blindly 
loyal to their leader. And she, on her side, 
was essentially fair-minded, and had no pride 
of opinion. " We must wait for one another," 
she said, " and listen to one another, and give 
the truth a chance to triumph." And for her 
part she was ready to tell all she thought. 

" There is nothing so private, after all," she 
said:, "the secrets are all open secrets. God 
is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 
Let us, then, tell all the good things we may, 
and think as little evil as we can, that we may 
have little to tell but good, and then let us tell 
it out, and keep on telling it." 

In all their difficulties, therefore, she insisted 
on hearing both sides as fully as possible, and 
thus even those who disagreed with her felt that 
she was a safe leader. 

There was, however, a persistently active 
minority of party Republicans who did not feel 
this, and who tried year after year to make her 
followers desert her. But in this they were quite 
unsuccessful, though they caused the leaders a 
great deal of worry and anxiety. In fact, these 

244 



Politics 

malcontents really accomplished the very oppo- 
site of their aim, by making Miss Willard's 
friends rally round her even more devotedly than 
before. As one of them graphically put it : — 

" If Frances were to push a plank out into the 
ocean and tell us to walk along it, we'd all go 
without question . ' ' 

Frances herself, however, did not think of her 
own personal influence, nor judge severely the 
people who opposed her. There never was the 
slightest tinge of uncharity in her thoughts.' 
" They were in their condition," as she was, and 
no one could see more than by the light that was 
vouchsafed him. She firmly believed that 
" farther on we shall be found walking once 
more side by side," and, after taking her pledge, 
she could never be induced to blame an 
opponent, or to impute motives less genuine than 
her own. 

For all that, she had anxious times. The 
executive committee met hurriedly here and 
there for long and sad sessions of prayer and 
consultation : sometimes they sat up until far 
into the night talking and planning how to avoid 
the difficulties that arose, and sometimes they 
reached their conclusions only at the very last 
moment . 

245 



Frances Willard 

In 1884 Frances went to the political nom- 
inating Conventions with a memorial asking for 
a Prohibition "plank" on their platforms. She 
had never been to such Conventions before — 
hardly any women went to them — and she was 
greatly interested to see how they were managed. 
It was a time of tremendous political excitement 
of the very worst kind. There was no real issue 
between the parties, but almost more ill-feeling 
and agitation than there had ever been before. 
There were two minor parties, the Greenbacks 
and the Prohibitionists, to confuse the party 
lines, and personal animosity was rampant. 

The political situation was interesting. Eight 
years before, in 1876, the elections had almost 
renewed the civil war — Haynes and Tilden had 
then stood equal without the votes of South 
Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, and from these 
States had come two sets of returns, one from the 
white people for the Democrat and one from 
the " reconstructed Governments " for the 
Republican. It had seemed an impasse, because 
the Senate was Republican and the House 
Democratic, and the deadlock that ensued had 
only just been broken in time by a special 
electoral commission which decided for Haynes, 
the Republican. After this, the last of the recon- 

246 



Politics 

structed Governments had fallen, and at the next 
election the coloured people were practically pre- 
vented from voting ; but, even so, the solid 
Democratic South falied to elect their candidate. 
That was in 1880. Then came the murder 
of the Republican President, Garfield, by a dis- 
appointed office-seeker, and the resulting con- 
centration of public attention upon Civil Service 
reform. At the election of 1884 it seemed as 
if Cleveland, the Democratic candidate, were 
more likely to further this than Blaine, the 
Republican, and therefore in this election arose 
a considerable number of " mugwumps," or 
Northern Independents, who professed themselves 
free from party, and were likely to vote for 
the Democrat. This was one cause for 
Republican anxiety, and the two minor 
parties added another. The Greenbacks, or 
People's party, were nominating candidates on 
the question of restoring the national currency, 
and of refusing to allow the banks to issue 
money, and the Prohibitionists were nominating 
solely on the question of the prohibition of the 
sale of intoxicating liquor. These two parties 
drew their members almost entirely from the 
Republicans, and this caused torrents of the most 

bitter abuse to be poured upon their leaders. 

247 



Frances Willard 

Into this turmoil Miss Willard went with her 
memorial, and from it she came out with her 
conviction stronger than ever. The Democrats 
took no action ; the Republicans admitted her, 
and listened to her speech, and then did nothing ; 
the Greenbacks adopted a very vague and use- 
less plank, and it was only from the Prohibi- 
tionists that she obtained a satisfactory result. 

The manners of these different bodies seemed 
to her very significant. She came in as a com- 
plete outsider, knowing nothing but the issues 
for which they stood and their bad reputations 
for corruption. She found them made up of 
men whose intelligence she did not admire, men 
of bad habits, who smoked and spat and lounged 
about, and treated her and her woman's memorial 
with scant attention. This was true of the 
Republicans, the Democrats, and the Green- 
backs ; but with the Prohibitionists it was all 
quite different. There, women were members 
of the Convention, and even officers of the party, 
and the whole atmosphere was changed. 
Nobody smoked, everybody was polite, and 
there were flowers in the hall. The "homelike 
touch " that Miss Willard loved was here plainly 
to be seen, and she felt that within this paoty 

lay the hope of America. It was curious that 

248 



Politics 

she should attach so much importance to external 
things. Yet it was quite true that the absence 
of spittoons did typify a great divergence 
between the Prohibitionists and the other parties. 
It was not only spittoons that they lacked, how- 
ever : bribery and business were absent, too, as 
well as some of the more valuable elements of 
modern Governments, and the lack of these 
things prevented them from ever becoming 
strong enough to carry any State and secure any 
electoral votes. It is not to be imagined that 
the Prohibitionists were unimportant, however, 
for all their weakness. They not only split the 
party vote, but they called public attention to 
their question, and to their particular solution of 
it, and it is very largely due to their political 
efforts that more than half of the territory of the 
United States is to-day " dry " land. 

With a party such as this, and only with such 
a one, could the temperance women finally unite. 
They, too, were all in the air, all Christians, all 
theorists. They did not smoke or drink, and 
they liked to see flowers on their platforms ; 
they, too, stood for " total abstinence and pro- 
hibition, no sectarianism in religion, no sec- 
tionalism in politics, no sex in citizenship," and 

they took the New Testament lor their textbook 

249 



Frances Willard 

of political economy. They, too, knew " that in 
America the great clanging will of government, 
kept in motion at enormous cost, turns out just 
one product, and that is protection for life and 
limb and property." But it seemed to them that 
" the home our brothers have forgotten ade- 
quately to protect," and therefore they, too, 
demanded " that the land we love may at once 
and for ever go out of partnership with the 
liquor traffic." 

In this year, therefore, the Women's Christian 
Temperance Union officially endorsed the Pro- 
hibition party, though still leaving latitude to the 
State and local branches to decide for themselves . 
This taking to politics at once caused them diffi- 
culty. The Churches, which until that time had 
always been open for their meetings, were now 
shut. But, as Miss Willard said, "We can give 
up the high-toned Churches, but not our high- 
toned ideas " ; and when once the election time 
was over, this difficulty gradually passed away. 

Perhaps the greatest result of this action of 

the Women's Christian Temperance Union came 

from the outspoken criticism they gave to the 

underhand methods and personal abuse they 

found in all politics. Miss Willard was not 

afraid of making her views known, and with 

250 



Politics 

uncommon plainness of speech she denounced 
the trickery and the corruption she saw. 

It is not probable that the Women's Christian 
Temperance Union had much influence on the 
result of the election, even though that result 
was an extraordinarily close one, but some 
influence it undoubtedly had. It was this year 
that Francis received a letter from Mike Carey, 
her father's " hired man " at Forest Home, the 
same who had sent her 50 cents to Milwaukee. 

" Dear Miss," the letter ran, — " We are all Dimocrats 

but I have read in the papers that St. John and Daniel 

were your candidates, and I said to the boys, ' That lady 

and her folks were good to me when I was a lonesome 

broth of a boy just over from the old Country, and now 

the lady hasn't a vote to bless herself with, but we can get 

in four and let 'em all count on her side.' So I and our 

boys went to the polls and did just that, and I thought 

I'd wright and tell ye. 

" Mike Carey." 

Incidents like this were very encouraging to 
the temperance women, who, for all their keen- 
ness, had not a vote of their own, and they felt 
sure at the time that their influence had helped 
the Prohibitionists, and that these had had a 
great effect upon the election results. These 
results were very exciting. For two days the 
returns were uncertain, and at last it was found 

251 



Frances Willard 

that owing to the New York vote, the Democrat, 
Cleveland, had been elected by a very small 
majority. This threw the burden of the 
Republican defeat upon the Mugwumps, the 
Greenbacks, and the Prohibitionists of New York 
State, and the bitterness with which these people 
were attacked was for some time appalling. The 
women came in for their share of abuse, and 
Frances tried to teach them to use it so as to 
learn " to endure hardness as a good soldier." 
" You see your calling, sisters : first, to do well ; 
second, to suffer for it ; third, to take it patiently. 
This is acceptable to God." " For myself," she 
said, " the contradiction and malignity of the 
political debate have long since ceased to mar 
the tranquillity of my spirit ... I have entered 
the region of calm, and none of these things 
move me. If this work be of God, it cannot be 
overthrown ; if it be not, then the sooner it 
comes to naught the better for humanity." 

By the next year this excitement had died 
down, and the Society went back to the task 
of its own expansion. Thirty million pages of 
literature were sent out from the central office, 
and forty different branches of work were now 
carried on. Work among the emigrants and 
the Indians was undertaken, and a campaign 

252 



Politics 

against the opium -smoking in California. 
li Salvation by tongs is a failure/' Frances said, 
and every one must come and do her share with 
her own hands, whether her share were kitchen 
gardens, prison visiting, or " Gospel politics." 

In 1886 a Temperance Hospital was founded 
in Chicago, and in this year Frances herself 
became superintendent of it. Purity work also 
was made one of the departments of the Society. 
This was work for which Frances cared very 
deeply. The speeches she made on the subject 
show better than any others her zeal for the 
improving of the world. " He maketh His 
angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire." 

She spoke very plainly upon the difficult 
questions of sex relations, and constantly urged 
the other white -ribbon women to take the same 
attitude. " Falter who must, follow who dare/' 
was her call to them, and for the most part 
they dared to follow. Her speeches were full 
of a stinging, rousing indignation, " the faith of 
the Lord God Almighty in its fullness," as 
Wendell Phillips said, but with all her zeal she 
had no bitterness. The liquor traffic and all 
the worse evils of our civilisation she knew to 
be " the heritage of a less wise, less kind, and 
less enlightened past." " For their existence in 

253 



Frances Willard 

this gentler age/' she said, " we are all more or 
less responsible, and I have no harsh word to 
speak of any. To remedy them now we must 
be as good-natured as sunshine, as steadfast as 
gravitation, and as persistent as a Christian's 
faith." 

Steadfast and persistent they were, and the 
Society continued to grow at a remarkable pace. 
In 1888, however, the next election year, some 
of the old troubles revived again. Mrs. Judith 
Ellen Foster, one of the first women lawyers in 
America, who was the ringleader of the Repub- 
lican element within the Women's Christian 
Temperance Union, was that year asked to 
speak on Republican platforms. This was the 
first time any woman had spoken for any 
political party other than the Prohibitionists, and 
was such a wonderful advance that Frances, 
although she hated the discord Mrs. Foster 
caused within the Women's Christian Temper- 
ance Union, could not but rejoice at the new 
position women were gaining. 

It was a year of rejoicing for many reasons. 
The Society had grown almost unbelievably, and 
its fifteenth Convention, held in the Metro- 
politan Opera House, New York, was a most 
astonishing and triumphant gathering. 

254 



Politics 

1 Woman's capacity at branching out was here 
abundantly illustrated/' as Miss Willard said ; 
the Convention was " a moral Jumbo/' made up, 
as it was, of delegates from half a million 
members, who listened to reports from every 
State and territory, and from the forty different 
departments of work, and who discussed and 
debated and prayed together ; they had sent 
up, before this year, petitions containing 
10,000,000 names for scientific health teaching 
in the schools, and done much other work on 
an equally tremendous scale. 

In the different religious bodies the Society 
had strong allies, and, with the wonderful toler- 
ance of America, it often had on its platform at 
the same time Catholic priests, Protestant 
ministers, and Jewish rabbis. The Salvation 
Army worked with the white -ribbon women, the 
different religious temperance societies co- 
operated with them, and many important leaders 
in the Churches came to speak for them. The 
Prohibitionist party had made great strides since 
1 88 1, and now many important political leaders 
thought it worth while to come with their 
promises to the New York Convention. 

Over this miscellaneous gathering Miss 
Willard presided with the most successful tact. 

255 



Frances Willard 

It was one of her greatest gifts, this power to 
preside over the most complicated business, and 
to go through the most difficult and unexpected 
situations without disturbing in any way the 
tranquillity of a meeting. 

Whatever troubles might arise, she made the 
delegates feel that they were in harmony with 
each other in all essential points ; she kept them 
good-humoured and attentive, and always knew 
how to steer them through dangers and storms. 
Every one knows how largely the success of a 
meeting depends upon the personality of the 
presiding officer, and how restive and difficult 
both speakers and audience can become, and 
how agonising it is to listen to speeches that 
are not going to end promptly and with good- 
humour. But Miss Willard never let such 
things happen. Whether it was her unexpected 
phrases, or her unfailing sense of humour, or 
her optimism, or whatever was her secret, she 
never failed. She sat faithfully through all the 
meetings, said her appreciative words to every 
speaker, and was the life and soul of the whole 
thing ; and as she sat arid listened, she took notes 
on how to improve the next Convention, and 
began already to write her next annual address ! 
With this energy, and this attention, and with 

256 



Politics 

the great care she gave to every detail, it is no 
wonder that to attend a Convention over which 
Miss Willard was presiding was a unique experi- 
ence. Her own remarks, too, were always 
delightful. She had an unusually good memory, 
and filled her speeches with quotations from her 
favourite poets. She looked very young at this 
time, and there was an indescribable ring of 
gladness in her voice, as of confidence in the 
essential goodness of the world. She had this 
confidence, indeed, and never lost it, and though 
she could move her audience to tears by the 
pathos and the restraint with which she spoke, 
she never left them with any feeling but that 
of courage and hope. 

About this time Miss Willard engaged in two 
other very important activities. One of these 
was the effort then being made to gain admis- 
sion for women to the governing bodies of the 
Churches . 

In 1887 she, with one other woman, was 
chosen a delegate from Rock River Conference 
to the General Methodist Conference then meet- 
ing in New York. This was the first year that 
any woman had been so chosen, and there was 
a great dispute as to whether they wouid be 
allowed to take their seats. What Frances 

257 s 



Frances Willard 

called " the tintinnabulation of tongues " set in, 
and after much discussion they were not ad- 
mitted. It was, however, an advance that they 
should have been sent from the local confer- 
ences. But things moved so slowly with the 
Churches that some of the more ardent members 
went so far as to propose the founding of a 
separate woman's Church. Miss Willard finally 
opposed this, though with characteristic love of 
adventure she was " often urged, not a little 
tempted, and sometimes quite determined to 
take this new departure." 

The second effort in which Miss Willard 
joined at this time was that made to unite the 
reformers. She had always been on friendly 
terms with the Socialists and the Knights of 
Labour, and the Women's Christian Temperance 
Union had given and received much help from 
them. Now, in pursuance of the attempt to 
unite the reformers, she " sat up all night with 
the Resolutions Committee of the People's 
party," but only to see the Suffrage plank thrown 
overboard the next day, and the Prohibition 
plank thrown after it. Disappointed with this, 
she turned to the women's organisations, and 
in 1 88$ attended the first National Council of 
women. This was a very ambitious scheme, by 

258 



Politics 

which all the women engaged in public work 
should unite into one body, and meet from time 
to time to discuss their work, and to put " the 
wisdom of each at the service of all." It was 
a scheme too ambitious for the time, and though 
the National Council still exists, and an Inter- 
national Council has been formed, they are both 
as yet far from the great ideal the founders 
had of them in those days. The Council was 
planned and managed by Miss Anthony, who, 
like Miss Willard, had the gift of seeing far 
ahead, and sometimes too far, into the future, 
and it was she who insisted that Frances should 
be the first president of the Council. 

The next year, 1889, Miss Willard published 
her Autobiography, which she had written at the 
command of the white-ribbon women. They 
had told her she must write it, and had passed 
resolutions at the Convention in 1887 to make 
her do so. She therefore set to work, " clear- 
ing a little space on my workshop table by 
pushing aside so much that I ought to do," and 
in three weeks she had, with her amazing 
energy, put together the astonishing quantity of 
650,000 words ! Such a book was, naturally, 
not very carefully written . It was made up of old 
notes and speeches, letters, newspaper articles, 

259 



Frances Willard 

and scraps of all kinds, and it had at once to 
be cut down to much less than half its original 
length. In its final form, therefore, " Glimpses 
of Fifty Years " is a curious medley, and nearly 
half of it is a history of the Women's 
Christian Temperance Union. But with all its 
confusion it has its own peculiar charm. As 
they said of it, "it is a home book, written for 
her great family circle, and to be read round 
the evening lamp by critics who love the writer," 
and, looked at in this light, it is successful. 
It is a very frank piece of writing, in its way ; 
she did not hesitate to say of herself the very 
things her few enemies whispered to each other. 
They said she was ambitious, uttering the word 
as if it stood for all that is unscrupulous and 
sinful. Miss Willard openly admitted it. Her 
chief qualities were, she said, " a speculative 
mind, a hasty temper, a too ready tongue, and 
the purpose to be a celebrated person." 

She admitted that she had always felt con- 
tempt for the couplet : 

" Make me little and unknown, 
Loved and prized by God alone," 

and added : " Every nature has its limitations, 

and mine was here precisely. I wanted some one 

else to know " I 

260 



The World's Work 

She was now fifty years old, and certainly she 
had gained her wish to be a celebrated person, 
for she was by this time the best known woman 
in the United States. 

Her ambition reached even farther, however, 
and stretched out to other countries. But it 
was not the ambition to be more famous, but 
rather the ambition to be more truly " a helper 
of the world." 

In 1875 s ^ e had first dreamed of a world- 
wide Society that should fight impurity and 
intemperance wherever they were to be found ; 
but it was then too early, and the national work 
itself was not well enough established for such 
a great expansion to be possible. In 1883, 
however, when Frances came back from her 
journeys into every State in the Union, she 
insisted that such a Society should really be 
planned. She had seen, in her travels, people 
of all races who needed to be helped. She had 
seen the Chinese in California, the emigrants in 
the East, the Indians on the reservations, the 
Spanish in Mexico, and the poor black Africans 
in the South. All these different races lived 
under American rule, and were all part of one 
nation ; to Frances they were all the children 

of one Father, and she felt the call to help them. 

261 



Frances Willard 

She had seen the misery and the degradation of 
these people, and that their need was all the 
same. For everywhere their poverty was made 
abject and their ignorance besotted by the drink 
they took, hoping to make life happy. She saw 
the evil effects of drugs of all kinds, the brutality 
and the confusion they caused. She saw the 
white slave traffic, the prisons and asylums, and 
the hopeless children ; and she longed with an 
eager zeal so to move the whole world that these 
things might not continue. 

She had not, at first, much encouragement 
from the white -ribbon women. They thought 
their national work was enough, and for the 
most part they did not catch their leader's 
wider vision ; nor did they see how this work 
could be done, nor how they could get the 
money to do it. But a few of them shared 
Miss Willard's enthusiasm ; with her they hoped 
courageously and dreamt of impossibilities, and 
the first "round-the-world missionary," Mrs. 
Leavitt, went out in 1884. 

She started without money, in the brave 
fashion of those pioneers, and for nine years 
she travelled, organising and speaking for the 
temperance cause. The courage of this first 
missionary and of the others who followed her 

262 



The World's Work 

was well justified by the results of their work. 
They founded branches of the World's Women's 
Christian Temperance Association in nearly all 
countries, for they found flourishing in every 
remote corner of the globe the evils against which 
they were working, and they found all over the 
world eager women who longed to help them. 

At the end of the nineteenth century women in 
many countries were beginning to act for them- 
selves, and this world-wide Society, organised 
on the broadest basis of Christian toleration, was 
exactly the Society best suited to the time. It 
fought against an evil about the magnitude of 
which there are not two opinions ; it fought in 
so many ways that almost every person could 
find in it the work best suited to her views, 
and it brought to philanthropic women every- 
where a comforting sense of the unity of the 
world . 

The first work of the Society was the circulat- 
ing of a great world-wide petition. Miss Willard 
wrote it, and it was translated into every 
language. It was addressed to all the Govern- 
ments of the world, and was to be signed by 
the women of all nations. In this way Miss 
Willard thought she could best show how 
universal was the desire for reform, and impress 

263 



Frances Willard 

upon the women, powerless themselves under 
their rulers, the need to unite for the pro- 
tection of their homes. Round this the work 
grew, and it was a very useful implement of 
organisation. There is something in the magni- 
tude of this petition that appeals to the imag- 
ination, and wherever her missionaries carried 
it they roused instant enthusiasm. By 1895 & 
had obtained 1,121,200 names, and five million 
more through organised societies, and though 
the Governments to which it was presented paid 
no attention to it, it still accomplished an im- 
portant task. 

In 1885 Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas came 
to America, bringing news of the British 
Women's Temperance Association, which had 
been started ten years earlier. She was made 
the first president of the World's Society, which, 
however, had only a rather visionary existence, 
and she held the post till her death, in 1890. 
Mrs. Letitia Youmans came from Canada, where 
a Society had been started in 1875, an $ tn i s 
also joined the world's " organised mother-love," 
as Miss Willard called it. But it was not till 
1 89 1 that the first Convention was held in 
Boston, and there Miss Willard was elected presi- 
dent. This Society had been the widest dream 

264 



The World's Work 

of her ambition, and now she sat, surrounded 
by delegates from Japan, Spain, Syria, India, 
and all the other far-away countries of the world. 
It was a change from the days when she had 
wondered if she would ever " go anywhere, or 
see anybody, or do anything," but Frances was 
the same person still. 



265 



CHAPTER XI 

WORK IN ENGLAND 

MlSS Willard'S work had brought her many 
hundreds of friendships, and in 1891 it brought 
her the greatest of them all, when Lady Henry 
Somerset, president of the British Women's 
Temperance Association, came to attend the first 
World's Congress, held in Boston. 

The English and American leaders had long 
been anxious to meet. On hearing the news of 
Lady Henry's election as president, Miss Willard 
had written to her friend Mrs. Hannah Whitall 
Smith, then in England :— 

" Ap. ii, 1890. 
"BELOVED Hannah, — I could throw my cap in air 
to think that Lady Henry Somerset is going to head 
the army of white-ribboners. How good is God to bring 
us out into this goodly land ! . . . I have loved this 
lady since her name first came to me. Can you not 
get me her photograph, and will you not write at once 
a sketch for the Union Signal? If only you and she 
would come over to the Convention, and you and I go 

266 




LADY HENRY SOMERSET. 



To face page 266. 



Work in England 



about together, to Washington and the chief cities, what 
an arousement we could bring to pass ! . . . I can but 
think a new era opens upon us with the incoming of this 
blessed woman ... let us pray much for guidance. 

"With tenderest love, 

"Thy Frank." 

After this Mrs. Smith did her best to bring 
about a meeting, and the next year she and 
Lady Henry went to America together. From the 
first moment that the two leaders saw each other 
on the Evanston platform, their friendship began, 
and it deepened and strengthened day by day. 
They went together to Boston, as Frances had 
hoped they might. Mrs. Smith, in writing of it, 
gives a vivid picture of the Convention : — 

"Dec, 1 89 1. 
" It was a great pleasure to be travelling with such 
a charming friend and comrade as Lady Henry Somerset, 
and to see how every one was completely captivated by 
her, and how much enthusiasm she created. I was, of 
course, sure beforehand that it would be so, but still 
it was great enjoyment to witness it all. ... I do not 
believe any public character has ever before gone to 
America who has aroused such enthusiastic love as she 
did. Her meetings were tremendous crowds, and people 
had to go hours beforehand to get seats. She has the 
true gift of eloquence that not only convinces the intellect 
but also reaches the heart and conscience. . . . She is 
to be to England what Miss Willard is to America, and 

267 



Frances Willard 

I feel it is a cause of continual thanksgiving that such a 
gift has been given to us. It was delightful to see two such 
rare women as Lady Henry and Frances together. They 
became warm friends at once, and although I had praised 
them both to one another in no measured terms, they 
each declared the half had not been told them. 

" I wish I had time to tell you all about the Boston 
Convention. It was a wonderful assemblage of women, 
and Miss Willard's presiding was a beautiful sight. I 
had tried to tell Lady Henry what a marvellous presiding 
officer Frances was, but she said it far exceeded her 
expectations. It was very impressive to see so slight 
and frail-looking a woman controlling with such ease 
and grace and kindly humour such a crowd of eager, 
earnest workers, each one with a decided mind of her 
own, and with no hesitation in expressing it ! There was 
not one single unpleasant scene throughout the whole 
Convention ; which speaks well for women, for I am sure 
not even preacher men would have been so orderly and 
courteous. Every day promptly at eleven o'clock all 
business was suspended, and we had an hour's devotional 
exercises, with Bible Readings. ... I do not believe even 
Missionary Conferences are as manifestly devotional as 
this. It impressed the Boston people very much. 

" We had the first International Convention of the 
World's Women's Christian Temperance Union two days 
before the National Convention, and to this there were 
delegates from thirty-four different countries. This was 
most inspiring, and made it seem as if the " white ribbon " 
really were, as Miss Willard so often says, "encircling 
the globe. . . ." 

"And not only were all quarters of the world repre- 

268 



Work in England 



sented, but also all forms of religious belief. This to me 
was one of the most delightful things of the whole 
Convention. On that platform all nationalities and creeds 
seemed to be swallowed up in the blessed sense of the 
oneness of the family of God. One day a Catholic priest 
pronounced the benediction, another day a Quaker sister, 
another day a Methodist preacher, and still another day 
a Unitarian. . . . Miss Willard is what might be called 
a " Uniter." She said of Lady Henry, in one of her 
speeches, something that is marvellously true of herself 
as well, " Blessed are the inclusive, for they shall be 
included." If ever there were inclusive souls, theirs 
are, and as a consequence they are included by every- 
body. 

" Miss Willard's annual address was splendid, and held 
the audience of over three thousand people spellbound. 
So great was the eagerness to hear it that people were 
at the doors at 6 o'clock in the morning to get seats for 
the meeting at 9 o'clock. If I were to sum up the spirit 
of the Convention I should say that it was a magnificent 
illustration of " the Christianising of Christianity." How 
anybody could go home from a Convention like that, 
and wrangle over forms or ceremonies, or creeds, or 
dogmas, or could even care about them, is incompre- 
hensible to me. . . . The Women's Christian Temperance 
Union is essentially a company that " walks with Christ " 
as far as they have light, even though all of them may 
not have very clear doctrines concerning Him. And I am 
proud of belonging to such a company. On the Sunday 
of the Convention sixty pulpits in and around Boston 
were filled with white-ribbon women ! And many more 
were applied for, but could not be granted. We literally 

269 



Frances Willard 

seemed to take Boston by storm. Time fails me to 
chronicle it all. But the bright particular star all through 
was our beloved Lady Henry Somerset, who took all 
hearts captive, and whose visit to America has done more 
for the temperance cause in America than any words 
could ever express." 

The love and sympathy the leaders had for 
each other was an inestimable advantage to both 
their great Societies. It brought interchange of 
ideas between them, and made easy many of the 
inevitable difficulties of a world's organisation. 
England and America exchanged speakers, and 
worked together, and the example of the leaders 
went far to bring harmony to the workers. It 
was an ideal friendship, and seemed almost 
inspired, and it came to Miss Willard at the time 
when she most needed it, for it came just before 
her mother's death. In 1891 Mrs. Willard was 
still living, but she was over eighty, and knew 
that she must soon die. To Frances, as she 
went about the country, the thought of her 
mother and the quiet, contented home at Evanston 
had been the centre round which her life was 
built. She grew to have a more passionate love 
for it with every y.ear of her busy life, and the 
thought of it was her most constant inspiration. 
It was an ideal which helped her in her work 

270 



Work in England 

for the protection of all homes, and helped her 
to give up her own days there that she might 
safeguard others. 

But for several years now she had tried to 
stay more at home for her mother's sake ; not 
that Mrs. Willard made any claims upon her, 
or was anything but the courageous, helpful 
mother she had always been. But Frances 
could not bear to be away from her, and to miss 
the last years of her companionship. Her 
mother had always been her dearest and most 
sympathetic friend, from whom she had made 
no concealments, and now they seemed nearer 
than ever. When Frances had taken up her 
public work, her mother had been glad and 
proud. " I must keep well for the sake of my, 
daughter, and the work God has given her to 
do," she said, and she had so ordered her life as 
to help in every quiet way she could. She lived 
a life of serenity, and spread about her house a 
tranquil atmosphere that made it Rest Cottage 
indeed. When Frank came home tired with 
the cares of her work, and hurried with the strain 
of constant travelling, she always found there 
peace and comfort. She loved to sit by the 
fire with her mother, talking to her and sharing 

in her peacefulness, and, as many of the workers 

271 



Frances Willard 

said, they had but to step into her room to have 
all the way smoothed out before them. 

Mrs. Willard had all her life been fond 
of reading and eager to learn and to study ; but 
she had had little leisure. " My mother has had 
the lifelong consciousness of power unused, 
while she has laboured with heart and hand for 
us," Frank had written when she was twenty, 
and it was a very true observation. But if 
she had not had the time to become learned, she 
had maintained steadily her primitive wisdom 
and her thoughtful outlook on life. "Mother's 
remarks are always the result of much thinking," 
Frances had once said. During the quiet years 
after she was sixty Mrs. Willard at last had the 
opportunity she had always missed, and she took 
advantage of it to the full. She read a great 
deal, pondering long and seriously on what she 
read, and, as Frank said, " she was occupied with 
great themes." Besides her studies, she followed 
with keen interest the affairs of her daughter's 
Society, and was herself president of the local 
Evanston branch ; and with these occupations, 
and her grandchildren, and all her friends and 
neighbours, she was never lonely or unoccupied 
during her daughter's long absences. 

She was very active, in spite of her age, and 

272 



Work in England 

was always the first up in the household, going 
to the door for her morning paper, and reading 
it before their early breakfast. She was self- 
reliant and independent, as she had been all her 
life, and on her last birthday she quoted to 
Frances a poem that described how bravely she 
faced old age :— 

" ' Never, my heart, shalt thou grow old : 
My hair is white, my blood runs cold, 
And one by one my powers depart, 
But youth sits smiling at my heart.' " 

But, as she said, nothing could cure her of 
being eighty-seven years old. 

It was about this time that Lady Henry 
first came to Evanston. Madam Willard, as 
the white -ribboners loved to call her, wel- 
comed her as another daughter. She felt, 
as she said, that a great burden of care was 
lifted from her mind, since she could now leave 
Frank with so true and so great a friend. She 
was " free to die," and the next spring she did 
die, as quietly and nobly as she had lived. In 
her illness she troubled others as little as she 
could. " I had a little sensation," she would 
say when they asked her if she were in pain, 
but she would make no other complaints . ' You 
cannot think how glad I shall be when this is 

273 T 



Frances Willard 

over," she told her daughter, as she lay quietly 
waiting for death, longing for the life that she 
knew lay before her. She had lived her life 
well, and it had brought her many interests and 
enjoyments ; but now she was " in some haste," 
for the great future was ahead, and it was without 
regrets that she "passed onwards." 

To Frances her mother's death meant desola- 
tion. Home without her mother could not be 
home ; Rest Cottage had lost its restfulness, and 
she never lived there again. The meaning 
seemed to be taken out of life, and from this 
feeling she never quite recovered. She seemed, 
with her mother's death, to have lost her con- 
nection with earth, and to be just waiting a few 
years before she too could go onwards. In her 
great sorrow she turned, as her mother had been 
glad to think she would turn, to Lady Henry 
Somerset. 

They sailed for England in August, and then 
went to Eastnor Castle, where they rested 
quietly. Frances had little heart to do anything 
at first, but gradually some of her enthusiasm came 
back to her, and she took up her work again. 

In September they went back to America for 
the National Convention, and there Lady Henry 
was welcomed with enthusiasm by the white- 

274 



Work in England 

ribboners. But they soon returned to England, 
for America was too desolate still for Frances, 
and Evanston was too lonely. 

For the next six years she divided her time 
between the two countries, going home for the 
Annual Conventions and sometimes for the 
summer. The National Society was now on a 
firm foundation, and could go on of itself, and 
Miss Willard, during these years, devoted herself 
chiefly to work in England and to the World's 
Society. 

Her English work was very interesting to 
her. It began with a great meeting in Exeter 
Hall, in January, 1893, at which, in her honour, 
a great many famous philanthropists were 
assembled. She made at this meeting one of 
the finest speeches of her life. Always eloquent 
and clear, she had, since her mother's death, a 
new power, a sort of exaltation, that never failed 
to move those who heard her. Her gentleness, 
her dry humour, her Western accent, and the 
quaint idioms of her 'speech, together with the 
courage of her mind, at once charmed and cap- 
tivated the English audience, and her success 
was immediate. 

" I come to you," she said, " from the Missis- 
sippi Valley. In its whispering corn ... I 

275 



Frances Willard 

used to sit on my little four -legged wooden 

cricket, hidden away so that nobody should 

know, reading out of poets and philosophers 

things that caused me to believe more than I 

knew : and I do it yet. I do not know that 

Prohibition will capture Old England, and salt 

it down with the inviolate sea for a boundary, but 

I believe it will ; I do not know that the strong 

hand of labour will ever grasp the helm of State, 

but I believe it will ; I do not know that the 

double standard of life for men and women will 

be changed, but I believe it will ; I do not know 

that women will bless and brighten every place 

they enter, and that they will enter every place, 

but I believe they will. . . . For the sake of 

the mothers who kneel to-night beside their 

infant sons, I have the courage to speak out, and 

I know that whenever these words have been 

spoken by men and women in dead earnest, the 

great heart of humanity has been comforted, and 

tens of thousands have said, ' That is the larger 

hope."' 

After this, invitations to speak poured in upon 

her from all over the country, but she refused 

them. She was tired and ill, and wanted only to 

rest, and did not even feel able to go back for 

the World's Fair and her own National Con- 

276 



Work in England 

vention, which were held in Chicago in 1893. 
Lady Henry went in her place, and took her 
messages of love and courage to her old com- 
rades, while Frances stayed quietly at Haslemere 
with her old friend and fellow-worker, Mrs. 
Hannah Whitall Smith. 

When Lady Henry came back, early in 1894, 
Miss Willard was better, and they did a great 
deal of work together. They spoke all over 
England, made great tours through Scotland and 
Ireland, and brought everywhere an instantaneous 
revival of the temperance agitation. Their meet- 
ings were most remarkable, and roused tremen- 
dous enthusiasm. But Miss Willard's health 
broke down, and they were obliged to stop by 
the end of the year. 

At this time Miss Willard met most of the 
prominent English people. She was immensely 
interested in politics, and joined the Fabian 
Society in 1893, finding in it many of the views 
she had long held about labour and the duty 
of the State to care for children. She was 
welcomed everywhere, just as she had always 
been in America. If she mixed up the titles 
of people, as she invariably did, they forgave 
her when she called them " my dear brother," 

and " my dear sister " instead, and if they 

277 



Frances Willard 

thought her schemes too experimental and too 
wild, they forgave this also, because of the 
delightful sense of humour with which she dis- 
cussed them. 

Reporters crowded round her. She loved the 
Press, and would give her views on bicycling 
or on marriage, on gambling or careers for girls 
with equal readiness, and she soon came to be 
very well known all over the country. 

But within the British Women's Temperance 
Association things did not go quite smoothly. 
As there had been in America, so there was in 
England, a good deal of opposition to Miss 
Willard's ways from people who did not like the 
radical methods of the " Do Everything " policy. 
There were also many people who strongly 
objected to her preaching woman suffrage or 
talking on the question of purity. They held 
that a temperance society w r as a temperance 
society, and nothing else, and that Miss Willard 
had no right to try to commit them to these 
other things as well. She, on her side, could not 
understand why a society should deliberately 
impose limitations upon anything or anybody. 
" Everything is not in the temperance move- 
ment," she said, " but the temperance movement 
should be in everything." And indeed in her 

278 



Work in England 

own Society it was. From the opening of 
museums on Sundays to the teaching of physical 
culture, there was little they neglected. 

But it was the question of woman's suffrage, 
even more than that of the new policy of work, 
that caused difficulties within the British 
Women's Temperance Association. Both Lady 
Henry Somerset and Miss Willard felt that this 
question was a fundamental one for all women's 
societies, and though, of course, they did not 
want to make a belief in it binding upon all their 
members, they did want to convert them, and to 
make it as prominent an issue as possible. 

The difficulties were not quite the same as 
those Miss Willard had had to face when she 
had made her first speeches about suffrage 
seventeen years before, but they were very great 
difficulties. Her opponents were especially 
angry because she was an American. They said 
she had no right to have an influence in their 
Society, and they blamed Lady Henry for agree- 
ing with her. It was, perhaps, natural that many 
of them should resent the sudden introduction of 
new-fangled American methods. They had not 
seen these methods at work, and they were slow 
to believe that what had originated out of 

England could be good in England. But in the 

279 



Frances Willard 

end Lady Henry succeeded in convincing them. 
Miss Willard won them by her charm and by 
the simplicity of her thoughts, and the English 
Society was converted to the new methods of 
work and to the wider aims. 

Miss Willard was, of course, grieved when 
the temperance women were slow to take up 
what she was sure was so excellent, but of the 
storm of jealousy and personal hostility that went 
with it she was oblivious. " Never was one 
treated with so much generosity as I, all my life 
long," she often declared, though at this time 
she might have thought very differently. She 
was not, of course, so blind as not to see that 
there was some animosity, but she would not 
dwell on it. "I should like to say," she wrote 
of these troubles, " that as for a warm and 
beautiful reception, no mortal ever had a better 
than I have had in England, though there may 
have been just a little cake of ice in the bottom 
of the valley, which the shining light of affection 
and goodwill has not been able to strike." Mrs. 
Hannah Whitall Smith tells a story of how at one 
of the most stormy of the business meetings at 
this time a certain committee had been discuss- 
ing the new proposals, and pouring quantities of 

abuse upon this stranger who was forcing her 

280 



Work in England 

way in, with her " scatteration " policy, and try- 
ing, without understanding their conditions, to 
make them follow her lead. As they were dis- 
cussing this, Miss Willard herself came into the 
room. Of all the inappropriate things that might 
have been said in such a situation, Miss Willard 
chose the most unexpected. " I was told not 
to come in here," she began, " but I know what 
you dear women are planning, and I thought I 
must just come right in. I know you're planning 
how you can make me feel at home here, and 
so I want to tell you on my side how much I 
love you all, and to thank you for all the lovely 
welcomes you have given me." 

This attitude of Miss Willard's disarmed them, 
for it was really genuine ; and when she had 
gone again, that committee did actually set to 
work to plan how they might make her welcome 
among them ! Before long she was really 
welcome, and they had learnt to love her almost 
as much as her own white-ribboners at home 
loved her. 

From the time of her mother's death Miss 

Willard was not strong, and she tried hard in 

these years to stop working. But this she found 

it almost impossible to do. The problems that 

arose in connection with the world's work were 

281 



Frances Willard 

so difficult that she could not lay them aside. 
The field was so large and the workers could 
so seldom meet, that she never felt she could 
leave it to its own devices. Instead of resting 
she toiled on, therefore, caught up, as she said, 
in the momentum of years, though every month 
she felt more tired. She was the intimate friend 
and confidante of a quarter of a million people, 
and carried, besides, the responsibilities of a very 
important work, and now, after fifteen years, it 
was time for her to spare herself. But, instead, 
her interests only widened. She cared about the 
fight for the repeal of the CD. Acts in England, 
for the reform of the Turkish Army, and revo- 
lutions in Greece, and was not able to turn her 
eyes away from any of the struggles for human 
liberty. 

In 1896, in spite of her health, she and Lady 
Henry undertook a new piece of work. They 
had started for Normandy, determined for once 
to take a complete holiday, when the news 
reached them that some Armenian refugees had 
reached Marseilles, bringing word of the horrible 
massacres that were taking place. At once, 
without thinking of their holiday, these two tired 
leaders went to Marseilles, and immediately took 
charge of the refugees. With the aid of the 

282 



Work in England 

Salvation Army they secured a building for a 
hospital, in which these poor, half-murdered 
people could be nursed and cared for, and 
brought back to life and sanity. Miss Willard 
went about Marseilles appealing for help and 
sympathy, and met with most generous response. 
When the first care had been taken, and the 
immediate needs met, they left Marseilles, not 
to resume their neglected holiday, but to rouse 
England and America on behalf of the 
Armenians, and to raise money to help and save 
them. 

Then Miss Willard went back to America, 
though she had many fascinating openings for 
work in Jerusalem and Cyprus. Calls of all 
kinds came to her, and possibilities of help for 
the Armenians and for the temperance cause 
in the East ; but, as she said, " There are older 
ties, and there is the holy work and the great- 
hearted comrade whom I left behind." And the 
great-hearted comrade, her National Society, 
welcomed her back with joy. Her reputation 
at home had only grown with her work in other 
parts of the world. In this year 1,175 new 
unions had been formed in the United States, and 
to the thousands of white -ribbon women the name 

of Frances Willard was that of a patron saint. 

283 



Frances Willard 

The next winter she spent in a sanatorium at 
Castile, New York, where she still tried to rest 
and to get back her strength, but where she 
still went on working. Her mind seemed to 
grow ever more active. She looked farther and 
farther ahead, and saw possibilities and needs 
that she could not neglect. And, as always, 
she remembered and loved and helped the many 
individual friends who came to her for advice 
and encouragement. 

She had then a slight, delicate , look, and was 
always tired, though she made occasionally her 
old buoyant gestures, and tried very hard to get 
well. She seemed, they said at that time, to be 
living on her spirit, and working with her spirit, 
and as if material things had lost their hold 
on her. 

In the summer she went back to New Hamp- 
shire and lived in the open air. She had loved 
trees and birds and flowers all her childhood 
and all her busy iife, and now in the quiet of 
the woods she grew stronger. She went back 
to Ogden and to Churchville and to all the 
places with which her family was connected, and 
spoke to the neighbours, giving to them, in plain, 
" homelike " words, some of those speeches 
"which search out the heart." 

284 



Work in England 



In October, 1897, she went to Toronto, to the 
great World's Convention. It was the most 
important of all the many Conventions over which 
she had presided, and her address before it was, 
indeed, "the crowning message of her life." 

As she stood there to give it, frail and slight, 
with her pale, tired face and her wonderful 
expression of love and kindness, the women felt 
that she " could never look nearer to heaven ". ; 
when she told them that between this life and 
the next " there is such a little way to go," they 
felt afraid lest she should go from them. But 
she had never spoken more eloquently, and had 
never made an address so full of power and 
almost of prophecy. 

' We were brought up together," she said, in 
opening her address, " brought up in the unity 
and companionship of our work for the holy 
unchangeable right : what little strength we have 
is being used to hold up God's standards, and 
to preach His Gospel for this evil time." " If 
I should start the hymn ' Jesu, lover of my soul,' 
you who learned it in Japan would sing it with 
me, who heard it first on a Wisconsin prairie in 
a pioneer's home. We have all been trained 
alike to love the wonder of the world, the 
splendour of the midnight heavens, the glory 

285 



Frances Willard 

of the new-born day — brought up together in 
the ultimate and great endeavour to say with 
fond hearts fervently, ' O universe, what thou 
desirest I desire.' " 

Her speech ranged over the whole world, 
following the work of her Society. Famines and 
plagues, wars, revolutions, and all the great 
march of the world's history she passed in 
review, and in it all she looked hopefully for the 
coming of the Golden Age. 

From this Convention she went straight to that 
of the National Association at Buffalo, where she 
met all her old comrades for the last time. " In 
spite of the turmoil and mis judgments of a 
reformer's life," she told them, " I love and trust 
humanity more than when I began my work, 
and have come to believe in human nature next 
to God." She went on to tell them her thoughts 
on the value of reforms,, thoughts that had 
grown broader and more spiritual with the long 
years of work. " I believe," she said, " that 
the eyes into which I look are friendly, and 
that the home -loving people will utterly annihi- 
late home's greatest enemy — the legalised saloon. 
. . . But there will be other reforms and 
reformers when we are gone. Societies will be 

organised and men will divide on the right of 

286 



Work in England 

men to make and carry deadly weapons. . . . 
There will be great movements. . . . Long 
after the triumph of the temperance reform, long 
after the complete right of woman to herself, 
and to the exercise of all her powers, is regarded 
as a matter of course, long after the great trust 
of humanity takes to itself the earth and the 
fullness thereof as the equal property of all, there 
will remain reforms as vital as any of these, and 
on them people will group themselves in separate 
camps even as they do to-day. And it is not 
improbable that the chief value of the little work 
that we have tried to do on this small planet lies 
in the fact that we have become inured to contra- 
diction, and may be useful ... in waging 
battles for God upon some other star. 

" ' He hath sounded forth His trumpet that shall never 
call retreat : 
He hath sifted out the souls of men before His 

judgment-seat. 
Be swift, my soul, to answer him, be jubilant, my 
feet— 

Our God is marching on.' " 

At this Convention Miss Willard took upon 

herself another burden greater than she could 

bear. The huge enterprise of building the 

Woman's Temple had been undertaken some 

287 



Frances Willard 

years before, and for this it was now necessary 
to raise a large sum of money. It was a scheme 
for a huge office building in Chicago which was 
to provide headquarters for the Women's 
Christian Temperance Union, and at the same 
time to pay dividends on the cost of its con- 
struction by the rents of the other parts of it. 
Miss Willard had approved of the scheme from 
the first, believing, as she always did, in help- 
ing women to enter every business they could, 
and she would not abandon it now, when it 
seemed on the verge of failure. And yet to 
pledge herself to raise a vast sum of money, and 
to take this burden, too, upon her shoulders was 
certainly unwise, and far too generous. However, 
she did it, and, exhausted as she was by these 
two great Conventions, she set to work at once. 
" Everything about the Temple has not been 
wise," she said, " but was there ever a great 
enterprise without faults ? " and this saying is 
perhaps the kindest judgment of that unfortunate 
scheme . 

These two conventions had been, of course, 
a great strain upon Miss Willard's strength. 
But she did not feel able to rest, and she went 
back at once with Anna Gordon to Janesville 
and Forest Home, revisiting the scenes of her 

288 



Work in England 

childhood. Perhaps, like her sister Mary, she 
thought she could get well if she could only go 
home . 

But Forest Home was changed, and the people 
she had loved were dead, and Frances found no 
rest there. 

Then, in the church to which she had gone as 
a girl, on whose ceiling she had counted the 
wasps, among the people who had known her 
before she was a great leader, she made her 
last speech. For the last time she spoke of 
the ideal world for which she had been so long 
and so valiantly fighting, and for the last time 
she spoke " for God and Home and Native 
Land." And those who heard her felt that " the 
light of heaven was in her true and far-seeing, 
kindly eyes." 

After this, in January, 1898, they went to 
New York. Frances was determined to work 
harder there than ever, and to pay off the Temple 
debt before she sailed for England in the spring. 
At first she worked on steadily, but towards the 
end of the month she fell ill with influenza. 
Even then she could not quite stop working, and 
still insisted on telling V just this one thing " 
that really must be attended to, and making 
" just this one suggestion " that must not be 

289 u 



Frances Willard 

forgotten. As the days went by, she did not get 
back her strength, and the doctors and her 
friends began to be anxious. All over the 
country then the white -ribbon women began to 
pray for their leader, and into thousands of 
hearts there came the fear that their great 
friend and comforter might be taken from them. 
Frances herself felt sure she would die. She 
talked to her friends of the work, and of how 
it was to go on, and of how she had loved the 
workers . 

" There have never been such women as our 
white -ribboners," she said, " so large-minded, 
such patriots, such Christians. We have had 
a great and beautiful past, and the people don't 
know it ; they think we're fanatics. It has been 
a great fight, and they'll never know what we 
have been through." She told them what she 
had hoped to do, and sent loving messages to 
all the officers and workers, telling them to 
carry on the work without her. Those who 
were with her could hardly bear to listen ; the 
thought that she might die was more than they 
could realise, and they watched her and nursed 
her with tireless hope. They told her how the 
women were praying for her, and how she must 
live for the sake of the work and of those who 

290 



Work in England 

followed her, and the daily cables that Lady 
Henry sent brought her messages of love. But 
Frances was tired : " He giveth His beloved 
sleep," she said, " but, oh, sometimes He is a 
long time doing it." 

Her talk during these last days was of her 
friends, and how good they had been to her in 
her life, and of her work ; and then, as she 
drew nearer to death, it was of God. 

" Through the Magic 
Of Him the Mighty 
Who taught me in childhood, 
There, on the border 
Of boundless Ocean 
And all but in Heaven 
Hovers the Gleam." 

Once she roused herself, and with all the old 
eloquence in her voice, and the old eagerness 
in her look, she quoted :■— 

"'I am Merlin 
And I am dying, 
I am Merlin 
Who follow the Gleam.'" 

"I'm getting so tired," she added, " how can 

I follow it much longer?" And Miss Gordon, 

watching her, saw her draw near " the border 

291 



Frances Willard 

of the boundless ocean." She had obeyed the 
command :— 

" Call your companions, 
Launch your vessel 
And crowd your canvas, 
And ere it vanishes 
Over the margin, 
After it, follow it, 
Follow the Gleam ! " 

She had led them and had taught them and 
been faithful. She had followed the Gleam 
wherever she had seen it, and she had seen it 
when others had looked in vain. And now at 
the end she knew and tried to tell " how beau- 
tiful it is to be with God." 

And so, without fear and without regret, she 
died, on the 17th of February, 1898. 

" Then said Christian : ' I am going to my 
Father's : and though with great difficulty I 
am got hither, yet now I do not repent of all 
the trouble I have been at to arrive where I 
am. My sword I leave to him that shall succeed 
me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill 
to him that can get it. My marks and scars I 
carry with me, to be witness for me that I have 
fought His battles who will now be my rewarder.' 
When the day that he must go hence was come, 

292 



Work in England 

many accompanied him to the riverside, into 
which as he went he said, ' Death, where is thy 
sting ? ' and as he went dawn deeper, he said, 
'Grave, where is thy victory?' So he passed 
over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the 
other side." 



293 



CHAPTER XII 

THE VALUE OF FRANCES WILLARD 

Frances Willard had left her sword " to him 
that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage," and 
she had known that in the hands of the white - 
ribbon women her work was safe. Now, in 
their great sorrow, their first care was to do 
things as she would have them done. But no 
one could take her place, or make up to them 
for the loss of her personality, and though they 
could, and did, go on with her work as she 
would have gone on with it, they could not 
escape the feeling of utter desolation at her 
death . 

Sorrow for her was national, as well as a 
private loss in thousands of individual homes, 
for she had been the best -known woman in 
America, and its most honoured citizen. When 
she died flags were at halfmast from the Atlantic 
to; the Pacific : when her body was taken to 
Chicago every railwayman along the whole road 

294 



The Value of Frances Willard 

came out to do her honour, and a thousand 
memorial services were held for her in all parts 
of the country. Women in Iceland and in 
Africa mourned for her as for a sister, and to 
many a child " God, Buffalo Bill, and Frances 
Willard " seemed, as one Western schoolboy said, 
the three greatest people in the world. 

Seven years later, in 1905, the State of Illinois 
put her statue in the Capitol at Washington. 
Each State had the privilege of thus distinguish- 
ing two of its citizens, and Illinois had 
chosen only one, General James Shields, for 
this honour. As they said at the time, the 
choice of Frances Willard for the other repre- 
sentative was a tribute to; the progress of women, 
as well as to her own greatness. Her statue 
stands, the only woman's, in this American hall 
of fame, with soldiers and statesmen, by the 
side of Washington, "father of his country," 
and it is a place of pilgrimage to the temperance 
women. But public honour and public mourn- 
ing were little comfort to the women who had 
lost their friend. 

Letters of sorrow and of appreciation, tributes 
of love and of respect, poured into Rest Cottage ; 
for there was hardly a person who had ever seen 
her to whom her death did not mean sorrow 

295 



Frances Willard 

and a lass from out the world. Her personal 
charm had been so great and her influence so 
wide that it was quite true of her to say she 
was the best loved woman of the century. 

Since her death many people have written of 
Frances Willard. They have said of her every 
good thing that can be said of a human being, 
and have praised her until the chorus of praise 
grows almost unconvincing from its very 
unanimity. The memorial sketches and tributes 
from people of all kinds are enough in them- 
selves to fill many volumes, and to give to the 
biographer the task of endowing her with every 
virtue. But the reason for it is this, not that she 
was quite perfect, but that there was in her such 
a transparent love of goodness, such a single- 
hearted wish to be good, and at the same time 
such a sympathy with all the best aspirations 
of the people she met, that each believed 
her to possess those qualities he most admired. 

Her old friends and comrades still speak of 
her as a woman above all others, to know whom 
was the most vivid experience of this world, and 
a glimpse, perhaps, or a suggestion, of the 
world beyond. " She was splendid," they say 
of her, " the defender of all who were oppressed, 
and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 

296 



The Value of Frances Willard 

She lived in heavenly places, and viewed every- 
thing from this standpoint alone. She not only 
refused to share lower views, but she seemed 
actually not to see them." 

She was a mystic and a saint, they say, and 
she had changed eyes with Christ. To them all 
she was " the embodiment of all that is lovely 
and good and womanly and strong and tender 
in human nature." She was the best friend, 
the best leader, and the best Christian of her 
generation, and she was loved and mourned as 
few people have been. 

It is hard to estimate Miss Willard's influence, 
for it was an influence that spread in so many 
directions. The work of her great Society, 
reaching out, as it does, into almost every kind 
of social region, is in itself impossible to 
measure. It has certainly done much to make 
the life of the nation cleaner and the mind of 
the people saner. It has had its influence on 
school-children and politicians, as well as on 
animals and drunkards, and the end of its in- 
fluence is not yet. But besides her work, Miss 
Willard herself, as an individual, had an extra- 
ordinary effect on her generation. " The world 
was wider for women because she lived," not 
only because she opened new possibilities for 

297 



Frances Willard 

them, but because she showed in her own person 
how to be wider. 

Frances Willard is one of those whose influ- 
ence is felt long after they themselves are for- 
gotten. Her name will not for ever be associated 
with the history of her country, as Lincoln's 
is, or Jefferson's, and yet she shares their great- 
ness. They all worked for freedom, Lincoln for 
the slave, Jefferson for the colony itself, and 
Frances Willard for women. But, unlike them, 
she worked in no great crisis of her people's 
history : she did not come to the people through 
the enduring medium of war, great art, or 
great statesmanship, but in the language and 
in the spirit of her own generation, and in 
their daily lives. And this is why she herself 
will not be remembered, although she was one 
of the great pioneers of America. 

And yet, after all, the whole value of Frances 
Willard cannot be estimated by the work she 
did, nor by the change that her life has made in 
the world. Behind the capacity and energy that 
made her so successful, and beyond her fame, 
lies the goodness that was her nature, and the 
love that was her inspiration. For her character 
was the cause of her greatness. 

" Charity suffereth long, and is kind ; charity 

298 



The Value of Frances Willard 

envieth not ; charity vaunteth not itself, is not 
puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, 
seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, 
thinketh no evil ; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all things, 
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth 
all things. Xjharity never faileth." 



299 



Ube ©rcabam ptcts, 

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, 
WOKING AND LONDON. 



§EG 18 






